The finance ministry has asked the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to take the necessary steps to address the problems that caused the recent outage at the National Stock Exchange.
The National Stock Exchange of India Limited (NSE) decided to halt trading at 11:40 a.m. on February 24, 2021, due to technical issues, Minister of State for Finance Anurag Singh Thakur said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha on Monday.
However, the clearing corporation interoperability system remained operational, allowing market participants to consolidate their clearing and settlement functions at a single clearing corporation, regardless of the stock exchange where the trade is executed.
Trading on the NSE began at 3:30 p.m., and trading hours on all three stock exchanges — NSE, BSE, and MSEI — were extended for the day from 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. to allow investors to square off their existing positions.
“The Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) has advised SEBI to examine the problems that led to the NSE’s trading halt and the disaster recovery process that followed. The DEA also advised SEBI to take the necessary steps to address all of the underlying issues that caused the market disruption”,stated Anurag Singh Thakur.
FPIs made a net investment of Rs 2,332 crore on February 24, 2021.
The NSE was one of the largest derivatives exchanges in the world in 2019-20, with a market share of 93.2 % in equity cash trading and 99.9 % in equity derivatives trading (by total turnover).
