There is a likelihood that corporate governance norms may be diluted by the Securities and Exchange Board of India so far as the disclosures are concerned. The market is also abuzz with reports of Mapin being put on the backburner or scrapped altogether.
Implementation of both corporate governance norms and Mapin (The Central Database of Market Participants) -- were pushed to the end of the year after both corporates and investors made representations to Sebi that it would not be possible to comply with the regulations within such a short span of time.
While the minimum requirement for non-executive directors -- a major bone of contention for corporates -- is expected to remain unchanged and the corporate will have to comply with it, disclosure norms would be relaxed.
Sources said a good part of the disclosures in the corporate governance document puts the onus on the promoters and the majority shareholders to not only comply with it but also to ensure its implementation in the proper manner. "There is a lot of resistance against it," the sources said.
So far as Mapin is concerned former Sebi chairman GN Bajpai's ambitious plan to have a comprehensive identification program for market participation -- the market expectation is that it would be dropped.
The market watchdog is preparing a concept paper on this and in all likelihood an alternative -- demat accounts along with PAN (permanent account number) - would be worked out.
The main reason why Mapin ran into problems was the sheer logistics involved in the exercise, especially where individual market participants were concerned. Also the exercise faced some kind of resistance from people especially against finger printing it is associated with criminal activity.