Though fears of a payments crisis have abated somewhat, the badla session last week gave enough hints of the underlying risk with scrips like BPL and Videocon attracting huge rates. While Videocon attracted a weighted average badla rate of Rs 3.39 (hawala rate: Rs 95), BPL attracted Rs 8.71 (Rs 280) and Sterlite Rs 1.60 (Rs 195). This is indicative of the risk premium being demanded by badla financiers for financing the net long position in these scrips. The BSE board is, therefore, contemplating the imposition of ad hoc and mark-to-market margins to take care of any such problems in the future.

"If defaults occur, the BSE, on account of its Trade Guarantee Fund, will be in a position to handle the situation since the amountinvolved is less than Rs 10 crore. However, the loss incurred by bulls on account of the sharp fall in the prices of the BPL, Videocon and Sterlite scrips amounts to another Rs 8-10 crore," said a BSE director.

According to market sources, the terminals of eight BSE brokers will be deactivated from Monday as these members have not been able to square off their short-sale positions in Sterlite, Videocon and BPL. The move is being implemented so that the members concerned are debarred from taking up any fresh positions in any of the counters which could lead to problems for brokers and the exchange.

At Sunday's board meeting, the SEBI representative is understood to have asked why such a problem should have occurred in the first place and what corrective action the exchange should take to prevent such an occurrence again. SEBI has called for a meeting of the inter-exchange surveillance group on Monday to review the situation and implement some structural changes in the margins system.

Interestingly, theBSE on Friday took up the responsibility of squaring off the short-sales positions in BPL, Sterlite and Videocon. As there were very few takers, Videocon continued to record a short-sale position of more than 14 lakh shares. The BSE also imposed a 50 per cent margin on teji badla positions in order to take care of the likely price fall in the stocks of these three companies. The National Stock Exchange (NSE), on the other hand, asked over 100 brokers to fulfil their commitments of pay-in for securities on Saturday instead of Monday as scheduled. NSE members who have failed to comply with this directive will face the same fate as their counterparts in the BSE. Their terminals will be deactivated.

The NSE has taken this measure to take care of the short-sales positions which were shifted to the exchange last week on account of the 25 per cent margin slapped on short-sales by the BSE.