SEBI's policy on the promotion of Executive Directors (ED) is led to discontent among a large number of its working staff. The SEBI Employees Association (SEA) has shot off a letter to chief Ajay Tyagi highlighting inconsistencies in ED-level promotion and their growing frustration with it. This is after SEBI recently promoted GP Garg as ED.

Earlier, SEA had written two letters to Tyagi in June and July on the issue concerning promotions in SEBI.

“We feel betrayed, shocked, undervalued on the sidelining of all the general stream candidates for promotion to ED level post despite more than 25 years of work in core operational areas of SEBI,” SEA has told Tyagi.

“Despite verbal assurances, the principle followed for appointment of ED legal has been completely ignored in the latest ED level appointment,” SEA said.

During the appointment of ED legal, SEA members say that many of them were not considered as SEBI went by the work experience in the legal stream. That time, SEBI had told them that similar criteria would be followed in future. But now, SEBI has deviated from it.

Demoralised

“The message going to core SEBI officials is that their work does not matter and has no value when it comes to taking leadership positions in their own field. Officers are feeling demoralised, let down, and concerned about the continuous failure in giving importance to SEBI's core work. Failure to maintain stream wise segregation in reporting structures has already led to a lot of bitterness and resentment across streams and undermined the functioning of the organisation,” the letter said.

There are 600 officers performing core operational functions in SEBI to implement market regulations. But there are fewer chances for officers from the general stream becoming ED, compared to other much smaller streams that have witnessed better promotions recently. SEBI has nine ED-level positions as of now.

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