Bhave declined to comment on reported charges levelled by SHCIL that the snag was in the NSDL system. He, however, said that there was absolutely no snag in the systems of NSDL as the fact that there was connectivity with other DPs itself proved so.

"We have discussed the issue with the Stock Holding Corporation of India Ltd. We have taken a decision that irrespective of what the reason for the hiccup was, the first step would be to ensure that every investor who had placed an instruction on time and had the requisite number of shares in his account would becompensated come what may. How and by whom is irrelevant to the investor. "We will ensure that he is compensated", said Bhave, who was abroad when the snag was developed at SHCIL's end which severely affected pay-in at the National Stock Exchange (NSE) on Tuesday and then on Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on Friday.

"We have also taken the decision to ensure that by the time the next settlement takes place everything is in order. Only after this, would we go into the issue of what went wrong and how do we ensure that this does not happen in the future", said Bhave.

On whether the SHCIL-NSDL connectivity fell through owing to large transactions placed by the depository participant, Bhave said that prima-facie it does not appear that SHCIL had abnormally high transactions as compared to some other Depository Participants.

"There were DPs who had much higher number of transactions for settlement and these have gone through. So it does not appear that the problem was in the connectivity between NSDL and SHCILcollapsing owing to strain on the system due to high volumes of transactions. "We have handled the entire settlement at the bourses which was very high with respect to all other DPs without any problem", Bhave added.

Bhave said that being a new field and that too highly technology driven, there were bound to be teething troubles. "What is important is to ensure that there are enough early warning systems in place", said Bhave.

On whether NSDL's insurance policy would be able to cover the losses incurred by investors, Bhave said that only once the reason behind the snag is identified would issues like insurance policy clauses be worth discussing.

Later in the evening Bhave addressed a gathering of about 400 investors, clearing their doubts on the recent crisis.