The Bombay Stock Exchange was shut down for three hours and three minutes on Thursday due to a network failure. Trading halted at 9:42 a.m. and resumed at 12:45 p.m.

Market regulator SEBI and the Finance Ministry have called for details on the breakdown.

Ashishkumar Chauhan, MD and CEO of BSE, told the media that a “preliminary report will be sent to SEBI today. The data log has been taken by the telecom service providers. After doing a root-cause analysis, they will tell us about the problem.”

BSE, HCL Comnet and Cisco will prepare the root-cause report and present it to the BSE’s Technology Advisory Committee. It will then be presented to the BSE board and SEBI.

The BSE network has 10,000 primary connections with all the telecom vendors, and everyday more than 8,000 connections log in, either through BSE’s own local area network or through Hughes’ VSAT network.

On Thursday, the number of users slumped to 2,000. “We realised when it started going down. The market had to be closed as more than 40 per cent of the users could not trade,” said Chauhan.

Experts from the US and other support locations helped resolve the problem. The BSE restarted from its Dalal Street location even before its Disaster Recovery Site at Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City (DAKC) in Navi Mumbai, could step in.

Over 12.32 lakh trades were executed on the BSE on Thursday, with 2,953 scrips being traded and 16.32 crore shares amounting to ₹1,430 crore changing hands. In comparison, on Wednesday, 3,313 scrips were traded and 35.25 crore shares amounting to ₹4,316 crore changed hands.

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