The term of supersession, which was to expire on December 9, 1998, has been extended till December 9, 1999, as the reforms work at the bourse is yet to be completed. SEBI's letter in this regard was received by the exchange a week back.

Meanwhile, the management of the Magadh Stock Exchange, including its administrator and his deputy, is working overtime to put the exchange, which started operations in 1984, back on rails by linking it with the Inter-connected Stock Exchange (ISE). Mock trading has already started.ISE connected 11 regional stock exchanges in the country in the first phase and by Monday (second phase) bourses of Ludhiana, Guwahati, Jaipur and Chennai have also been connected.

Thedeputy administrator of the Magadh Stock Exchange, Charanjeet Singh, told The Financial Express that this connection "will bring back the past glory of the exchange." He went on: "Internal politics and bickerings had led to a virtual closure of the exchange. We hope that trading in the exchange, which has not taken place from February 1998, is likely to resume by early next year."

Basab Banerjee, assistant manager (networking) of the ISE, said that now, with the latest facility available here, "things should start functioning by January-end next year."

Along with the facility of ISE, the Magadh exchange plans to rope in the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). "Final talks have been held. We have to meet the pre-condition of having the facility of screen-based trading and then the brokers here will be able to trade on ISE as well as on BSE on the same terminal," Charanjeet Singh said.

Already, the exchange has 81 listed companies to trade in. He added that "negotiations with the BSE is on and the MoU is likelyto be signed as soon as we get such facility here."

To set up screen-based trading in Magadh Stock Exchange, the management, in principle, has decided to give the contract to Elliand Computers Pvt Ltd of Bangalore on condition that the bourse should have all the facilities for trading by mid-January.

In addition to all this, the administrator, S S Dhanoa, has auctioned three tickets of the exchange on November 27 this year and has received bids of Rs 2.8 lakh to Rs 3.1 lakh per ticket, a source said.

The source also added that "the bidding for ticket at such price is attractive and it shows that people are now seriously interested in trading and not politics."

During a recent visit of SEBI chairman D R Mehta at the Magadh exchange, the management demanded to increase the number of broker-members from 193 to 303. SEBI has now given permission to take in a further 100 members, said the source. He added that soon the exchange would have 21 new members out of the allotted quota of 100.

The members wouldhave the advantage of trading on a capital adequacy of just Rs 2 lakh only, said the source, and added that for members of NSE and BSE, the minimum capital adequacy required was Rs 1 crore and Rs 16 lakh, respectively.

Basab Banerjee said that the ISE trading system has been made near foolproof by having satellite back-ups and ensuring virtually no link failure.He added that the new exchange is estimated to cost around Rs 15 crore and was expected to "go live" by the end of this year.