The appellate authority, comprising insurance secretary B K Chaturvedi and senior economic adviser Arvind Virmani, heard the arguments of both the parties for more than three hours at North Block. The final decision in the case will be delivered on April 9. There will be no more hearings in the case.

Talking to newspersons soon after the hearing, Parekh said the executive director of the stock exchange had the emergency powers to open the terminals beyond the stipulated hours. The terminals were opened on June 12, 17 and 19.

According to Parekh, the BSE executive director had also kept Sebi officials informed about the decision of opening of the terminals beyond the trading order as required under the rules. Sebi, it is learnt, was informed about the opening ofterminals on June 30.

However, he did admit that the rules were framed 10 to 25 years ago. The rules generally needed to be updated with the change in the system of electronic trading.

Parekh, on his part, refused to hazard a guess on the possibility of interim judgment in his favour. His only comment was that the whole matter was sub-judice and it would not be proper for him to comment at this stage. Parekh will wait for the interim decision of the appellate authority on Wednesday before leaving for Mumbai.

When questioned about the sudden fall in the BSE index on Tuesday, he said that it was because of political uncertainty. He latter quipped, "It might be because we are here."

The Sebi decision came in the wake of detailed investigations which found that prima facie eight brokers, including BSE vice president Rajendra Banthia's firm harvest Deal Securities, dealt on behalf of a group of clienmts close to Harshad Mehta.

It is the first time that the capital markets watchdog has taken such drasticaction against the incumbent president of the country's oldest stock exchange.