Culprits in stock scam will be booked soon: Jaswant

NEW DELHI MAY 9. The Government today assured Parliament that early action would be taken in the stock market scam to identify and punish the wrong-doers. While presenting the report on action taken on the recommendations of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to the Lok Sabha, the Union Finance Minister, Jaswant Singh, said that "in certain cases where wrong-doers had to be identified and punished, action is still in hand". He stressed that it had been the Government's endeavour to act upon each of the JPC's recommendations and complete action taken at the earliest. As for the cases where action was pending, he said it would be ensured that it would be completed early. In a statement made while submitting the report, he said the JPC deliberations helped in initiating certain amendments in the SEBI Act even during the pendency of the committee's proceedings. Through these amendments, the SEBI's powers had been enhanced to take action against the securities market defaulters, initiate action against the brokers and corporates involved in insider trading and manipulation of various scrips. Mr. Jaswant Singh pointed out that on important recommendations about corporatisation and demutualisation of stock exchanges, the Government had already initiated measures to amend the Securities Contracts Regulation Act was being amended for this purpose. Meanwhile, broker members have been disallowed to become office-bearers of stock exchanges. In addition, several measures had been taken to enhance the efficiency and safety of the markets to ensure investor protection. He said the SEBI had also set up a separate division for inspection of stock exchanges and was taking follow-up action on the status of compliance of recommendations. On the Unit Trust of India (UTI), he said the Government had taken steps to honour the commitments made by the institution to US-64 investors and assured return schemes. All net asset value (NAV) based schemes were being managed by UTI-2 which is SEBI-compliant. In addition, during the pendency of the committee's proceedings, the UTI Act was repealed. With effect from February 1 this year, the UTI was bifurcated with UTI- 1 comprising US- 64 and assured return schemes and UTI-2 comprising the net asset value based schemes. The report of the JPC was presented to Parliament on December 19, 2002 and it had recommended that the ATR be presented within six months. "We have endeavoured to ensure that the maximum possible recommendations of the JPC are implemented," he said.