A team from the Bombay stock exchange (BSE) has already visited the MSE premises to study the technical feasibility so that member-brokers could directly trade at the oldest bourse in the country, MSE sources said.Mse was one of the 15 regional exchanges which formed the ISE, though it has still not paid the joining fee of about Rs 1 crore as members felt that ISE had not succeeded in its aim of bringing together these exchanges.

When contacted, MSE President M Amarnath told PTI that though no decision had been taken so far, the council of the exchange, its highest decision-making body, was scheduled to take up the issue shortly.

The decision to be made was whether the subsidiary shouldbe a company limited by shares or through guarantee as there was a question of losing tax concessions in the case of the former, he said.

While declining comment on the future of ISE, which had also applied for BSE membership through a subsidiary, the MSE President said ``our effort is to improve our exchange and the recent measures have resulted in a spurt in two-side volumes to about Rs 4.66 crore.'' Executive director of the MSE Saji Cherian disclosed that once the BSE membership was considered and resolved, the bourse planned to establish trading floors at smaller cities in Tamil Nadu in order to deepen and broaden the market.

"Studies relating to the technical aspects have almost been completed for this venture and once we move ahead on the BSE membership, the bourse will go ahead on it," cherian said.

Currently, though brokers have the Bombay Online Trading (BOLT) system on their trading screens, they have to tie-up with member-brokers of the BSE for routing trades, a problem that would go once MSE gets BSE membership."If we can integrate BOLT with our mantra (MSE on-line), and follow it up with the on-line system of the National Stock Exchange as well, it would be a value-addition to the members in terms of arbitrage," he said.

The bourse had also decided to expand its membership and was in the process of admitting 75 more members to the existing 172, of which only about 100 were currently active, he said.

With the introduction of the modified Carry Forward Trading System (MCFS), the exchange was in a position to fulfill the requirements of both types of brokers - those who deal in cash and those who prefer to carry forward deals, he said. Cherian said a proposal for introduction of the rolling settlement was also being discussed.