Young Indian lawyers pen a comprehensive book on Securities Law
India's Bar & Bench News Network reports today that two serving officers of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI); Sumit Agrawal and Robin J Baby have authored one of the first ever comprehensive legal commentary on the SEBI Act, 1992. The Book has been published by Taxmann and was launched on Monday.
http://barandbench.com/brief/2/1862/young-lawyers-pen-a-comprehensive-book-on-securities-law
The Book touches on various aspects of securities law as well as compares practices followed by international securities regulators. The book exhaustively comments on each section of the Act starting from legislative history and chronicles the various judgments pronounced by various judicial fora including the Supreme Court of India as well as the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT). It also discusses significant orders passed by SEBI or its adjudicating officers in addition to deliberating on important international decisions and Expert Committee Reports.
It had been more than 20 years since the SEBI was established. SEBI was established as an administrative body in 1988 and as a statutory body in 1992. The authors decided to pen down the book since there was no reference material available to rely upon or to build arguments. The authors worked for almost three and a half years on the book.
The authors are from National Law University (NLU) Jodhpur and National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) Kolkata respectively. The book has been revised and edited by Amit Agrawal, alumnus of National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore and a former attorney with Amarchand Mangaldas. Amit currently practices before a variety of judicial foras in Delhi and Jaipur.
Speaking to Bar & Bench on his involvement in the Book, Amit Agarwal said, “I got involved in this at a much later stage. Initially Sumit had started with the idea and had worked on it. Later Robin joined the bandwagon providing the much needed support. I used to talk to them on this but was not involved as such. They finished the preliminary draft by Jan – Feb 2011. It is then that my involvement grew. I slowly got very interested in the work as it is a slightly niche area and practically there does not exist any source for this. Also, with my experience at Amarchand and otherwise, I decided to revise and edit the book draft. The views in the draft were initially largely reflective of the regulatory experience of Robin and Sumit. I however was not attuned to think much from a regulator’s perspective. So, we used to hold lengthy discussions to arrive at a consensus and in case of persisting disagreements to include all view points. I also had to put in lot of research. We analysed plethora of judgments and ascertained judicial trends. I took me about 6-7 months to complete the edition and the revision of the Book, as it becomes difficult to manage both academic work and professional work simultaneously. I thoroughly enjoyed the process.”
Talking about the strength and the negatives of the Book, Amit Said, “The book isn’t really written from a corporate attorney’s perspective in the sense that much of securities law practice is based on market practice. We have tried to keep ourselves distanced from that and have focused on the legal interpretation of the statute without overlooking the industry practice. What we have tried to do is cover all judicial or quasi judicial decisions of relevance that have been rendered in connection with SEBI Act. Comprehensiveness and consolidation of these decisions, I would say is the strength of the Book. One of the things that we have not really covered much is the regulations for example Takeover code as this would have extended the scope of the book quite wide if we were to include each of the regulations. We have however given at least a beginner perspective to each of the regulations”.
“One of the problems that we were facing was that SEBI on a regular basis used to come out with these new circulars. The more time we took to finalize things, there were more things to be included. We had to resist the temptation to update the book. The Book is updated till about July. Post that it has not been updated on a comprehensive basis”, added Amit.
SEBI Chairman U. K. Sinha in his foreword to the book, has noted, “Various market participants..have often observed that the ‘Grundnorm’ of securities laws – SEBI Act, 1992 – as an academic study has not till date received the focus that it deserves..I am confident that the book will provide a legislative, regulatory and judicial insight into the securities laws in India.”
“Writing books by serving Judges and beaureaucrats is not uncommon in India. But I believe Indian regulatory space has not seen much legal commentaries, except one or two by RBI Officials. I am sure this publication would be well received in the capital market for its sheer thorough work” said Nilesh Bhanushali, Country Head (Middle East) for Taxmann Publishing.
The Book is intended to address and assist judicial officers, legal practitioners, regulatory officials, academia, securities market professionals, and students of law.
