BENGALURU (Reuters) -India’s market regulator on Friday dismissed charges of market violations against the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) and seven others in a 2019 case, bringing the country’s largest stock exchange one step closer to its public listing.
The NSE was accused of collusion and market violations in connection with its co-location facility, which allows trading members to place servers in the exchange’s premises for faster access to data and trading.
In April 2019, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) fined the NSE 11 billion rupees ($131.14 million) for not ensuring equitable access to the facility to all trading members, stalling NSE’s plans to go public.
The SEBI has dismissed the charges, citing a lack of sufficient evidence to prove collusion between the exchange officials and a brokerage firm OPG Securities, even though the NSE did not have a detailed and defined policy to use its co-location facility.
OPG Securities and its management had been accused of misusing the NSE’s co-location facility.
The regulator also dismissed charges against NSE’s former chiefs, Ravi Narain and Chitra Ramkrishna.
While the matter of the fine is still pending with India’s top court, the exchange has restarted its listing process and has applied for “no-objection” with the regulator, Reuters reported last month.
($1 = 83.8790 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Jayshree P Upadhyay and Indranil Sarkar in Bengaluru; Editing by Janane Venkatraman)
