Improving the legal process in enforcement at SEBI

Abstract

The first statutory regulatory body that the government of India set up post the reforms of 1991 was the Securities and Exchanges Board of India (SEBI). As a regulator for the securities markets, SEBI was given the powers to create subordinate legislation and to investigate wrong-doing and impose relevant penalties. In this paper, we examine and describe the legal processes at SEBI with a focus on the enforcement process, particularly on the quasi-judicial functions. We make an attempt to lay out the principles that ought to drive such functions in a regulatory body, against which we compare the current workings at SEBI.We propose a series of improvements through which the rule of law could be further strengthened.