Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], August 27 (ANI): The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is not seeing any changes to the Closing Auction Session (CAS) mechanism right now, Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey said on Thursday, responding to questions over market feedback on the newly introduced closing-price mechanism.
Asked about feedback from market stakeholders and renewed divergence between prices around the start of the closing process and the eventual closing price, Pandey said the regulator was not looking to alter the system at present.
"We are not seeing any changes right now. And the system is running as it is," Pandey said in response to a media query.
He said participation in the new mechanism is expected to improve as brokers make CAS available more widely through their trading applications and investors become familiar with the process.
"Participation will increase," Pandey said, adding that brokers and other market intermediaries would enable the facility on their apps and investors would gradually learn to participate in the new market mechanism.
CAS, or the Closing Auction Session, was introduced from August 3, 2026 to determine the official closing price of stocks in the cash market on which futures and options contracts are available. It replaced the earlier system of determining the closing price of these stocks through the volume weighted average price, or VWAP, of trades during the final 30 minutes of continuous trading.
Under CAS, continuous cash-market trading in eligible stocks ends at 3:15 pm, after which a separate 20-minute closing auction runs until 3:35 pm. Buy and sell orders are brought together in the auction, and the closing price is determined through an equilibrium-price mechanism. SEBI introduced the system with the aim of creating a more transparent closing price and bringing India's market-closing mechanism closer to practices followed in major global markets.
Separately, Pandey indicated that SEBI is close to completing the regulatory process relating to the National Stock Exchange's long-awaited initial public offering.
Asked whether approval for the NSE IPO could be expected in the next couple of weeks and whether the regulator was close to giving its clearance, Pandey replied, "Yes, we are close."
The comment comes after NSE filed its Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) dated June 17, 2026, with SEBI. NSE had earlier received the regulator's no-objection certificate for proceeding with the IPO, clearing a key hurdle that had held up its listing plans for several years.
According to the draft offer documents, NSE's proposed IPO will be entirely an offer for sale by existing shareholders, with no fresh issue of shares. The offer comprises up to 148.91 million equity shares of face value Re 1 each, with the shares proposed to be listed on BSE. The price band and consequently the total value of the IPO have not yet been finalised. (ANI)
SEBI not seeing any changes to Closing Auction Session right now: Tuhin Kanta Pandey
