The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) earlier this month passed a significant order relating to the country’s largest stock exchange, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) of India. As the markets regulator, whose primary mandate is to ‘protect the interests of investors in securities’, SEBI’s 190-page order raises more questions than it resolves. In particular, it spotlights the regulator’s tardiness in adjudicating a sensitive matter involving the manner of appointment of a top-level NSE official as well as possible regulatory violations by the then CEO and MD Chitra Ramkrishna in sharing confidential internal information with an unknown person. By SEBI’s own admission, the first complaint alleging governance issues in the NSE’s April 2013 appointment of Anand Subramanian as Chief Strategic Adviser was received in December 2015. After an exchange of e-mails on the issue between the regulator and the NSE in 2016, SEBI tasked the exchange’s board with determining if there had been violations of norms. To be sure, SEBI acknowledges that it was hamstrung by the NSE’s dilatory approach in responding to its missives. That the board of a Market Infrastructure Institution, charged with safeguarding the trust of millions of investors, distressingly failed to exercise crucial oversight over the conduct of its CEO apart, SEBI too hardly covers itself in glory. The regulator spills far too much ink in almost voyeuristically sharing the contents of the e-mail exchanges between Ramkrishna and her ‘unknown guide’ even as it concludes that it is unable to establish any “specific loss caused to investors” by the NSE and Ramkrishna. The onus is now on the market regulatory authority to reaffirm that there are no ‘holy cows’ in its regulatory regime and that it remains laser focused on protecting small investors.