HC junks plea to modify order which held P-Notes are legal

The Delhi High Court today refused to entertain an application seeking modification of its earlier order in which it had said that Participatory Notes (P-Notes) are legal and were regulated under the law.
"This application has been filed in a disposed of case. So we are not inclined to entertain this application. Hence it is dismissed," a bench of Justice Badar Durrez Ahmed and Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva said.
The court's order came on application filed in a dismissed PIL, which had claimed that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had wrongly made a statement that P-Notes were not illegal and sought action against him.

By way of an application, the counsel sought modification of the court's September 17 order and alleged that Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Sanjay Jain during the hearing of the PIL had "knowingly and deliberately declared false facts".
The court, however, turned dowm the petitioner's claim against the ASG and said that the "allegation against the ASG is expunged".
The petitioner's claim was also vehemently opposed by ASG Jain, who said that the petitioner cannot make such an allegation against him before the court.

Earlier, the court had passed the order on a PIL filed by advocate M L Sharma after the ASG had told the court that P-Notes are part of Offshore Derivative Instruments (ODI) which are issued by or on behalf of Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPI) and are "generated, operated and destroyed" outside India.

The ASG had also said that P-Notes were regulated instruments and placed before the court the SEBI (FPI) Regulations.
After going through the regulations, the high court had observed, "it appears that ODIs include P-Notes and such other instruments which are entered into by FPIs in relation to securities listed or proposed to be listed in stock exchanges in India".
The court had also said that FPIs were functioning under a regulated regime.