In an interview with The Financial Express, Sebi executive director (legal) Dharmishta Raval also spelt out the need for an alternate dispute redressal mechanism for individual investors' complaints, as according to her, Sebi should not be engaged in adjudicating on each and every investor complaint. With over 400 cases registered against it, the regulator has decided to attach greater importance in arming itself to stave off legal battles.

``The Dhanuka panel has suggested a single securities act ie merge acts like the SCRA, Sebi Act and the Depositories Act. The whole idea is to prevent confusion which happens despite the SCRA and the Sebi Act, both extremely simple drafted legislations. We are going a step forward and undertaking an exercise to have one common set ofregulations for all intermediaries.

Currently, we have different set of regulations for each intermediary. The aim is to simplify legislation so that it can be interpreted easily and effectively,'' said Raval.

Raval, who has been involved with Sebi since 1989, being part of the committee set up for creating Sebi, feels that there is a need to clearly define the role of Sebi.

``Should Sebi be merely a regulator or should it be a prosecuting body as well? Should it get involved in granting compensation to each and every investor complaint that comes to it or should there be another body doing this? Our only concern is that if the government says that we are a prosecuting agency then we must be armed with the necessary powers to undertake such action,'' she said.

``As far as granting redressal to each investor complaint through compensation is concerned, an alternate dispute redressal mechanism should be set up where an investor can go to get his dispute redressed quickly and effectively. This bodycould be an independent one,'' said Raval.

``In the securities market, it is extremely important for a regulator to act swiftly. This is because in this case justice delayed is as good as injustice. There is a scope for Sebi to improve its performance on this front and we have made suggestions to the government to arm us better to ensure that an investor gets quick redressal,'' share said.

Raval sees greater litigations taking place in the securities market as Sebi starts taking more and more action against erring intermediaries. ``In the first four years of Sebi's existence several regulations and guidelines were not ready. Now that most of the legislation is in place, we are going to see completion of several inquiries and subsequent action by Sebi which in turn are going to be challenged before the courts,'' said Raval.

``In most cases we have succeeded in getting favourable orders but unfortunately only the cases which we have lost have got highlighted. Our concern is that there should be levelplaying field for investors to seek judicial recourse. If an investor is going to spend twice the amount in getting back the sum he has lost, there is no justice,'' Raval said. She expects litigation to come down after five years by when courts would have delivered several verdicts on Sebi's powers and thereby set a precedent.

``Once there is a precedence, things would be much better. We on our part are gearing up to counter the strong battery of lawyers that players manage to enroll for fighting their cases. We have hired about 20 graduates from the National Law School and are hiring another 10. We are slightly understaffed but are prepared with legal infrastructure to take up the challenge,'' said Raval.