Tuhin Kanta Pandey | Market watchdog Premium

Tuhin Kanta Pandey takes charge as SEBI Chairman amid controversy, vows for optimum regulation in capital markets.

Tuhin Kanta Pandey, the former Union Finance Secretary, took charge as the Chairman of Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on March 1, Saturday. The next day, the news broke that a Mumbai Special Court Judge directed the city’s Anti-Corruption Bureau to file FIRs on former SEBI chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch and three of the regulator’s four Wholetime Members for their alleged complicity in listing of a now delisted company in 1994.

Without wasting any time, Mr. Pandey, 59, moved into action.

In a statement, SEBI said that even though these officials were not holding their respective positions at the relevant point of time, the court allowed the application [to register the FIR and a court monitored investigation] without issuing any notice or granting any opportunity to SEBI to place the facts on record. “The applicant [a media reporter who could get a court order on Saturday, the day after Ms. Buch exited office and the day Mr. Pandey took over] is known to be a frivolous and habitual litigant, with previous applications being dismissed by the Court, with imposition of costs in some cases,” it said.

SEBI said it would initiate appropriate legal steps to challenge the order.

On the day he took over, at the SEBI headquarters in Mumbai, Mr. Pandey faced a lot of questions from journalists, particularly about the style of functioning of his predecessor. In his response, he firmly put the organisation’s integrity at the centre, without resorting to any blame game.

Mr. Pandey, a 1987 IAS officer of the Odisha cadre, is the 11th Chairman of SEBI. All of SEBI’s past heads, except G.N. Bajpai and Ms. Buch, were IAS officers. With Mr. Pandey at the helm, SEBI has returned into the fold of the “steel frame of India”, as the Indian Administrative Service is often referred to.

In the past three months the Centre has selected two Finance Ministry secretaries as regulators — Sanjay Malhotra, who was appointed as the RBI Governor in December last year, and now Mr. Pandey.