Non-compliance of listing agreement includes failure to publish annual, half yearly and quarterly results, non-payment of listing fees with the exchanges among others. A SEBI official told PTI that they have already written to the stock exchanges of National, Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi regarding this and would soon communicate this to other stock exchanges as well.

He said at BSE itself there were about 3800 scrips which were not being traded for the last few years and the respective companies were also not paying the listing fees. At DSE, about 1800 companies were not traded out of the listed 3800 companies.

The SEBI wants stock exchanges to delist these companies. However, it did not specify the action to be taken against these companies by the exchanges, he said.

Sources in SEBI said they have not given any timeframe tothe stock exchanges to initiate action against erring firms though they would like to see some measures being taken soon.

A DSE official said it was considering delisting the scrips of firms not paying listing fees. However, in other cases like non-payment of dividend, failure to publish company results, the stock exchange would resort to delisting as a last step, he said. The DSE official said delisting was easier said than done as it involved the investments of a large number of retail investors.

Besides, the SEBI guidelines on the issue were also not clear enough, he said. As far as investors were considered, delisting would end all hopes to sell the shares when the stock market turns around or the need arises.

The stock exchange was the only link that these investors had with the companies, he said adding with delisting the investors would be left with no information about the company. The DSE official said the exchange would tread cautiously and study the situation before taking a finaldecision.

According to the Chandratre Committee, which submitted its report on delisting to SEBI, investors should be given an exit option by the company.