These decisions were taken at a meeting of the market regulator with the presidents of the country's stock exchanges.

The market regulator has recently appointed a committee comprising a few depository participants, registrars and share transfer agents, the depositories and the BSE and NSE to look into matters relating to:

* the standardisation of various procedures and formats for depository operations;

* the issues relating to the delays and systemic improvement; and

* the safety aspects

Duringthe meeting although the the representatives of the exchanges appreciated the role of Sebi in providing impetus to the process of dematerialisation, they expressed serious concern over the lack of wide availability of depository participant infrastructure facilities even in important cities and towns. While some of these cities have depository participant centres, they are not connected live with the National Securities Depositories (NSDL). This, the representatives felt, results in delays and hardships for the investors.

Several suggestions emerged in the meeting for increasing the infrastructure facilities. One of the suggestions was that the clearing houses of the stock exchanges may be registered as the depository participant not only for clearing of settlement of securities but also for providing facility to the investors for opening beneficiary accounts.

The advantage would be that the clearing house can open branch offices at the nearby centres/cities of the stock exchange. It was however agreedthat wherever the clearing function is performed by an entity other than its stock exchange, that is a bank or a clearing corporation, such entity could be given the depository participant registration even for opening beneficiary accounts of investors.