Apart from the fact that continuous disclosures are important to investors, SEBI officials feel that it is rather strange that the chambers are raising a hue and cry on this issue when each one of them was represented on the Bhave Committee which had framed the guidelines for continuous disclosures.

The three apex chambers, CII, Ficci and Assocham, have, in separate memorandums to SEBI over the past month, called for doing away with this directive, which was issued after SEBI's board meeting on March 27 this year. The SEBI directive says that unaudited quarterly results have to be made available within a month of the end of a quarter, beginning June 1998.

The broad plea of the three chambers has been that this will lead to difficulties for companies as also window dressing of accounts by some. Ficci has, in fact,reportedly even gone to the extent of saying that disclosures of material events could hamper the competitiveness of companies. "It is very strange. These chambers were all represented on the committee which took the decision. Even after the committee submitted its recommendations, SEBI sought their views once again. Now, just when the deadline is round the corner, they are raising objections on the issue of quarterly disclosures which are so very crucial for an investor", said a senior SEBI official. "There is no question of going back on the directive", said the official.

According to the Bhave committee report, CII was represented by Lazard Creditcapital chairman Udayan Bose, Ficci by DSP Merrill Lynch chairman Hemendra Kothari, and Assocham by Bipin Jhaveri. SEBI had, at its board meeting of March 27, cleared certain recommendations of the committee's report, including quarterly disclosure of unaudited results. SEBI had directed stock exchanges to make changes in the listing agreement so that disclosureof unaudited results on a quarterly basis is mandatory -- just as the current practice of half-yearly results is.

SEBI had also directed firms to release the results on the same set of accounting policies as those followed in the previous year. In the event of a change in the accounting policies, firms had been asked to recast the results of the previous year as per the current accounting policies, to make it comparable with current year's results.