The government has recently appointed Kamlesh Chandra Varshney and Amarjeet Singh as full time members contributing to the board of markets regulator at SEBI. Varshney is holding the position of joint secretary at the Department of Revenue and Singh is an executive director at the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), as per the government’s statement.
Ananta Barua and SK Mohanty’s retirement had led to the positions being vacant, which the newly appointed members will fill. The appointments are considered for a period of three years. Mohanty’s term had ended on June 25, while Barua’s term came to an end on Aug. 1st.SEBI currently has two WTMs—Ashwani Bhatia and Ananth Narayan. The present appointments complete the four whole-time members as provided by the SEBI Act. WTMs are a step below the SEBI chair and head separate divisions. Recently, the regulator also had to face challenges in one of the orders related to a broadcast and media firm due to the lack of WTMs. Varshney, a joint secretary in the revenue department of Ministry of Finance, is from the 1990 batch of Indian Revenue Services (IRS). As a senior official in IRS, he has worked in Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) in tax policy and foreign tax. He has also represented India at global forums and negotiated on important tax treaties, cross-border tax issues. Meanwhile, Singh has been associated with SEBI for nearly three decades. He took charge as SEBI executive director in July 2017 and has also been a part of quasi-judicial orders by SEBI since.
It has also been further reported that the view within the stock market regulator’s and policy making circles is that one whole-time member should be appointed from outside the organisation, while the other should be from SEBI for the purpose of continuity
