Securities and Exchange Board of India chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch on Thursday skipped a meeting of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee due to “personal exigencies”, The Wire reported. The meeting was postponed.
Buch was to be questioned about the conflict of interest allegations levelled against her in August, in connection with alleged financial misconduct by the Adani Group.
“The first meeting of the committee, we decided to have a suo moto review of regulatory bodies,” Congress leader KC Venugopal, the chairperson of the panel, told reporters. “That is why this morning we had called the regulatory bodies of SEBI, for review of SEBI.”
In August, American investment firm Hindenburg Research alleged that the SEBI chief and her husband Dhaval Buch had “hidden stakes” in offshore entities tied to stock price manipulation and money laundering by the Adani Group.
Madhabi and Dhaval Buch denied the allegations.
This came 18 months after Hindenburg Research accused the Adani Group of engaging in accounting fraud and money laundering using offshore tax havens. The market regulator, led by Madhabi Buch, had “drawn a blank” in its investigation of these allegations last year and told a Supreme Court-appointed panel that further enquiry could be a “journey without a destination”.
Venugopal said that notices had been sent to certain individuals. “They [the SEBI chairperson] sought an exemption from appearing in the committee, which we denied,” he was quoted as saying.
Venugopal added that Buch had initially confirmed that she would appear before the committee on Thursday, but informed the panel on the morning of the meeting that she could not travel to Delhi because of “personal exigencies”.
“We thought that it is better to postpone today’s meeting for another day,” Venugopal said.
While skipping the meeting could be construed as contempt against legislative bodies, an exemption was made because Madhabi Buch is “a lady”, The Hindu quoted him as saying.
The agenda of the meeting included a briefing by audit, followed by oral evidence of the representatives of the Department of Economic Affairs and the Securities and Exchange Board of India on the “Performance Review of Regulatory Bodies established by Act of Parliament”, according to the Lok Sabha Secretariat.
The Bharatiya Janata Party MPs on the committee accused panel chairperson Venugopal of political bias in setting the agenda of the meeting.
BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad, who is a member of the panel, accused Venugopal of taking suo motu decisions, claiming that the performance review of regulatory bodies was not under the ambit of the Public Accounts Committee.
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