Meera Swarup, a high ranking Finance Ministry official and 1988 batch officer of the Indian Audit and Accounts Service (IAAS), has been appointed as the new ‘technical’ member of the Securities and Appellate Tribunal (SAT), which had been functioning without a third member for several months now.

Swarup was also in the race for the post of Whole Time Member with market regulator SEBI. In May last year, there was a tiff between SEBI and SAT over the lack of a technical member in the tribunal that hears capital market related cases.

SEBI argued in one of the case hearings that the tribunal cannot conduct court proceedings without a technical member and questioned the authority of the two member bench.

Public interest litigation

The SAT bench had then ruled that it has the authority to run the tribunal and also marked the copy of the order to the Finance Ministry and the Supreme Court, and asked for it to be treated as a public interest litigation. Still the government has taken nearly seven months to appoint a technical member. Swarup, who was so far the special secretary and financial advisor in the department of expenditure of the Finance Ministry, will be the third member on the SAT bench.

The tribunal is currently presided by two senior judges including Justice Tarun Agarwala, former Chief Justice of Meghalaya High Court, and Justice MT Joshi of the Bombay High Court.

Swarup will earn a monthly salary of ₹2,25,000 every month for a tenure of four years for 67 years of age, whichever comes early. CKG Nair, the earlier technical member of SAT after his retirement, has been employed as a Director at SEBI run securities market educational institute NISM.

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