The Securities Appellate Tribunal has yet again been rendered dysfunctional. I wrote a piece in the Business Standard last week about how, yet again, the functioning of the tribunal for substantive final hearings has come to a halt.
As the appellate tribunal that is exclusively empowered to hear appeals against every order of the Securities and Exchange Board of India, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India, and the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority, the SAT is internationally-watched and tracked. This tribunal is also the check and balance over decisions of all stock exchanges.
India now takes pride in being the third largest economy in the world in terms of purchasing power parity, and the sixth biggest economy, without normalising for purchasing power. Yet, we lag in the Ease of Doing Business rankings with a particularly low ranking in enforcement of law – India ranks 164 out of 190 with a quality of judicial processes index of 10.5 on a scale of 0-18. Letting a premier tribunal such as the SAT languish is a sad comment on governance of institutions that run India’s economy.
