"After an hour long deliberation, it was decided that since the issue was sensitive, a proper representation of all the 23 exchanges was required, including the newly recognised Inter-Connected Stock Exchange," said MR Mayya, the chairman of the committee.

"It was, therefore, decided that the committee would meet again on December 16 at 11.30 am, to consider the views of all the exchanges before reaching at any final decision," he added. Among other things, according to sources, the committee also looked into the implications of a recent move by the National Stock Exchange to hold a compensatory trading session on Saturday, November 28, because of the holiday on November25. Although Mayya refused to comment on the deliberations, sources hinted that NSE's representative defended the exchange's stand by explaining that it was a one-time affair and that they had technical reasons to conduct trading sessions on Saturday.Interestingly, while market was agog with rumours that Calcutta and Bangalore stock exchanges were against uniform settlements. The Calcutta Stock Exchange (CSE) president, Kamal Parekh, clarified that the opposition was not against uniform settlements but the time chosen by the authorities to press for the same.

"The market is in a bad state, volumes are falling considerably with clientele business on its lowest ebb. Under these conditions we feel that it is not the appropriate time to implement such a move, since it could have a negative impact on the broking fraternity," said Parekh.

Sebi sources said the government was keen to bring about structural changes in settlement cycles in order to curb excessive speculation. Currently, speculators shift theirpositions from one exchange to another by taking advantage of varying settlement cycles. This can be squelched if all exchanges have uniform settlement periods. The sources said that the best time to bring in uniform settlements would be when stock exchanges move towards rolling settlements. But there is no unanimity among exchanges on this.