The Congress on Friday said the Sebi board’s acceptance that there was a need to strengthen the regulatory mechanism vindicates the party’s position on the Adani affair and repeated the demand for a joint parliamentary committee probe.

Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh said: “The Sebi board accepts that it needs to do more to prevent the ‘circumvention of regulations such as the requirement for Minimum Public Shareholding’, precisely the allegation made against the Adani Group. It has therefore mandated ‘additional granular level disclosures regarding ownership, economic interest, and control’ for foreign portfolio investors who (1) hold more than 50 per cent of their India assets in a single corporate group or (2) more than Rs 25,000 crore in Indian markets. It also states that the Prevention of Money Laundering Rules on beneficial (i.e. actual) ownership were tightened in March 2023.”

Ramesh said the Supreme Court's expert committee that looked into the matter had used soft but damning language. "It claimed that there was no regulatory failure by Sebi but rather ‘piquantly’ went on to describe a number of major regulatory failings, including the rewriting of rules that allowed opaque overseas funds to be invested in Adani companies in huge quantities," he said.

"The reintroduction of strict reporting rules following the Sebi board’s 28 June 2023 meeting represents a public admission of guilt by the regulatory body," Ramesh added.

None of these steps would have been possible without the wide public outrage over the “Modani revelations” and the Congress’s relentlessHum Adani Ke Hain Kaun (HAHK) series of 100 questions, he said.

Despite all attempts toproject as a clean chit the report of the expert committee appointed by the Supreme Court, all actions taken subsequently by Sebi indicate an admission of guilt, Ramesh added.