A technical glitch halted trading on the BSE for three hours today, resulting in steep losses in its turnover and prompting market watchdog Sebi and the Finance Ministry to seek a report from the bourse.
The benchmark index Sensex opened the day with an over 83 points gain at 09.15 hrs to hit another record-high of 25,924.25. But about 30 minutes later at 09.42 hrs, a glitch developed on its network and the trading was halted across all platforms of the exchange, including equities and currencies.
It resumed trading with another pre-open session after three hours. It closed the day lower by 17 points at 25,823.75.
"Sebi and the Finance Ministry have sought reports from us following the worst technical glitch in our modern history. We will be sending the same by the end of the day today," BSE Managing Director and Chief Executive Ashishkumar Chauhan told reporters here in a hurriedly called presser at the exchange headquarters in South Mumbai.
Motilal Oswal Securities Chairman Motilal Oswal said: "Though there is no systemic issues at the BSE technology platform, it is very important issue. What is more surprising is that why its disaster resolution system took three hours to activate, while the very purpose of the DRS is real-time crisis resolution.
At the end of trade today, BSE's derivative segment's total turnover tumbled 74 per cent to Rs 13,394.80 crore, while equity segment's turnover tanked 67 per cent to Rs 1,429.99 crore compared to the previous closing levels.
"There was a corresponding drop in volume at the BSE today due to a network outage," Destimoney Securities MD and CEO Sudip Bandyopadhyay said.
This is the second time in two months that Asia's oldest stock exchange, set up in 1875, faced a technical snag. The last time it happened for a short while was when BSE's new BOLT platform for currency trading faced was launched.
The exchange, which has over 5,000 companies listed, will be sending a detailed report called 'root cause analysis' after technical assessment to Sebi and the Finance Ministry at the earliest, Chauhan said without indicating any timeframe.
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