Plea filed in SC seeks report from SEBI, Centre on June 4 market crash

Plea seeks SEBI report on June 4 crash

Lawyer Vishal Tiwari filed a plea in the Supreme Court on June 7, seeking a report from market regulator Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and the Central government to file an investigation report on the share market crash on June 4.

The application has been filed as an application in the Adani Hindenburg writ petition. While the plea states that the case is pending, the SC's website and the June 3 judgment in the case stated that the case has been disposed off.

The plea also asks court to direct SEBI to file its investigation report on the Adani-Hindeburg issue and a status report on whether it has implemented the directions suggested by an expert committee.

According to the plea, while the court directed the market regulator to implement reforms suggested by the expert committee, it has not filed any document on whether the these reforms had been implemented. It also alleged that SEBI has not informed to the SC or the public at large as to whether it has completed the pending investigation on the Adani-Hindenburg case.

The plea said "That still whether the SEBI has completed the pending Investigations in compliance of the court order and has submitted any record before the Hon. Court is not evident and done SEBI has not apprised the Hon. Court or public Visibly in any manner."

The plea noted that the public have the right to know what transpired.

The supreme court on January 3, rejected the demand for transferring the probe into allegations of violations of securities laws by Adani group companies to a special investigation team, in a relief for the conglomerate almost a year after the Hindenburg Research came out with a report.

The court on January 3 also asked SEBI to complete the remaining two of the 24 probes in three months.

The results of the now concluded Lok Sabha elections were declared on June 4. While the BJP led NDA obtained a majority by winning over 290 seats in the Lok Sabha, BJP fell short of getting a majority on its own as it missed the mark by over 30 seats. The results were unexpected as many exit polls predicted that BJP would come back to power with a big margin.

As an aftermath of this, the Indian stocks suffered their worst intraday fall since March 2020 on June 4. NSE Nifty 50 index closed down 5.93 percent at 21,884.5 points, and the S&P BSE Sensex fell 5.74 percent to 72,079.05. The indexes fell as much as 8.5 percent earlier in the day, after hitting record highs on June 3 after exit polls predicted comprehensive win for the NDA.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on June 6 sought a probe into the stock market crash and questioned the timing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah’s advice to Indian investors ahead of the Lok Sabha election verdict.