Discuss the role of SEBI in ensuring market resilience during unscheduled disruptions. Evaluate the significance of standard operating procedures (SOPs) in this context.

Section 11 of the SEBI Act, 1992 casts on SEBI the duty to protect investors and regulate the securities market [1]. Unscheduled disruptions — technical outages, cyber incidents, calamities or law-and-order events — test this mandate most sharply, making operational resilience central to SEBI's regulatory design.

SEBI's role in building resilience

• Business continuity architecture: SEBI's BCP–DR guidelines require Market Infrastructure Institutions (stock exchanges, clearing corporations, depositories) to maintain disaster recovery and Near Sites, with clearing corporations and depositories mandated to achieve zero data loss [2].
• Cyber resilience: the Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience Framework (CSCRF), 2024 applies a graded, entity-category approach built on the goals of anticipate, withstand, contain, recover and evolve [3].
• Settlement safety: clearing corporations such as NSE Clearing, which completed 30 years in 2026, act as central counterparties absorbing default risk; SEBI regulates their margining and settlement cycles [5].
• Market microstructure safeguards: price bands, trading halts, and the Closing Auction Session (CAS), introduced in 2026 to make closing-price discovery auction-based and manipulation-resistant [4].

Evaluating the significance of SOPs

• Merits: SEBI's proposed SOP for operational and settlement activities on unscheduled holidays [5] replaces case-by-case improvisation with a pre-agreed protocol, reducing settlement and counterparty uncertainty. It clarifies roles across SEBI, exchanges, clearing corporations and banks, shortens decision time in a crisis, and supports ease of doing business by giving intermediaries predictable obligations.
• Limits: it remains a proposal, not a notified norm; written procedures deliver little without periodic drills and audit; and no SOP can anticipate every novel shock, so calibrated regulatory discretion must survive alongside it.

On balance, SOPs convert institutional experience into codified, testable practice — a modest instrument with outsized value. Coupled with regular simulation exercises and disclosure of disruption-handling outcomes, they can strengthen investor confidence and align India's market infrastructure with global resilience standards.