Alongside, the Sebi board meeting slated for March 15, is expected to push through the issue of a code of ethics for stock exchange directors and senior officials in the wake of the raging controversy over the Anand Rathi tapes.

The Sebi board is also expected to take up for further discussion the crucial issue of demutualisation of the stock exchanges, which has also assumed significance in the light of the alleged interference by bourse office-bearers into surveillance aspects.

Sebi has already written to the government favouring demutualisation, which essentially means delinking trading membership from exchange ownership, thereby distancing the brokers from running the exchange managements.

Sebi is under intense pressure to act swiftly on the crash and the existence of the alleged bear cartel, since the downturn has poured cold water on the feel-good factor generated by Mr Yashwant Sinha's landmark Budget.

Parliament is scheduled to discuss the recent crisis in the markets under a call attention motion on Tuesday. Over the weekend, Sebi officials were busy giving finishing touches to the replies to be made by the government on the market crash.

Sebi officials, starting from chairman DR Mehta downwards, were all in office on Saturday last, despite that day being Holi. The crash apart, the sudden payment problem at the CSE on Thursday last further skewed the pitch for the markets regulator which is now being seen as having acted late in the whole affair.

Sebi on Sunday unleashed a slew of measures to bring in some legitimate liquidity in the markets and stem the downslide by cutting down the gross exposure of brokers and also increasing additional margins. However, whatever the regulator does now seems to be failing to stem the rot, and the market fell over 100 points again on Monday.