Missing Pages In PDF Filing Of Nam Securities' Financial Statements An Inadvertent Error: SAT Cuts BSE Penalty

The Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) in Mumbai on Thursday held that a defect in a PDF filing by Nam Securities Limited, where two pages were missing, was an inadvertent lapse and reduced the penalty imposed by BSE Limited from Rs 1.77 lakh to Rs 5,000 while partly allowing the company's appeal.

A coram of Justice Presiding Officer P.S. Dinesh Kumar and Technical Members Meera Swarup and Dr. Dheeraj Bhatnagar found that the lapse did not amount to a wilful violation of Regulation 33 of the SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2015.

The appeal was filed against a communication dated June 27, 2025 issued by BSE imposing a penalty of Rs 1.77 lakh for alleged non-compliance with disclosure norms.

Nam Securities, a listed entity engaged in securities trading, had approved its audited financial results for the quarter and year ended March 2025 on May 30, 2025. It uploaded the results on the BSE portal within 30 minutes in PDF format and within 24 hours in XBRL format. The results were also published in newspapers.

The company had prepared and uploaded the filings. However, the PDF file uploaded by it was missing two pages containing quarterly figures. BSE treated this as non-submission of financial results in PDF format and imposed a fine of ₹1.53 lakh, which was later enforced at Rs 1.77 lakh, including applicable charges.

Nam Securities maintained that all disclosures were made within the prescribed timeline and that the omission was inadvertent. It re-uploaded the complete PDF on July 1, 2025 immediately after being informed of the defect, and sought waiver of the penalty citing absence of mala fide intent and a technical glitch.

BSE, which hosts the filing platform and monitors compliance, proceeded to enforce recovery of the penalty. The company paid the amount under protest and approached the Tribunal.

The Tribunal noted that BSE's acknowledgment showed that the PDF had been uploaded, though its contents were not verified at the time. It also observed that BSE's communications referred to non-submission of financial results rather than incomplete submission.

Holding that there was no intention to contravene the law, the tribunal said, “That there was no intention on the part of the appellant to contravene Regulation 33 of the LODR Regulations is clear from the fact that XBLR format was uploaded within stipulated time and the financial results were published in newspapers. Thus, the violation, if any, appears to have taken place inadvertently.”

Accordingly, the Tribunal partly allowed the appeal, reduced the penalty to ₹5,000 and directed BSE to refund ₹1.72 lakh to the company within two weeks. As the penalty had already been paid under protest, the Tribunal directed BSE to refund Rs 1.72 lakh to the company.

For Appellant: Advocates Divyanshu Goyal and Satyam Gyan

For Respondent: Advocates Manish Chhangani, Sumit Yadav, Abhay Chauhan and Atul Agrawal