189 NSE firms fail to get women on board as Sebi deadline passes

As many as 189 companies or nearly 13% of the 1,457 NSE -companies missed the March 31 deadline of appointing a single woman director on their boards, according to a compilation by Prime Database.

The number stood at 245 companies as on 4:30pm on March 31. More than 50 companies including Adani Enterprises on Wednesday announced the appointment of women directors, even as many others including some state-run giants lagged behind in getting a female member on their board to comply with a new regulatory requirement. Other names include Siti Cable, Star Delta Transformers, Ind-Swift, Winsome Yarns, Emkay Global Financial Services and Greenlam Industries.

As on March 31, 762 women had been appointed to 842 directorship positions in 805 companies. Of these, 41 companies already had a woman on the board before the Sebi guideline was announced (and appointed a second woman director on their board), implying that 764 companies have since complied with the requirement.

At least 107 of the 793 directorship positions have been filled by appointing women belonging to the promoter group. An additional 223 of the 793 positions are non-independent positions. Companies have mostly appointed wives or daughters of their promoters or top executives, while some have also replaced their independent directors with their female family members, mainly wives, daughters or sisters.

Those lagging behind in appointing women directors included Jet Airways and Amrapali Industries, as also a number of state-run firms such as ONGC, PNB and BPCL, NHPC, SJVNL and RCF, as per the latest update available with the exchanges.

According to leading proxy advisory firm, Institutional Investor Advisory Services (IiAS), having a woman director on board is just the first step towards board diversity. The companies without a woman director may face penal action under the Sebi regulations, as also under the Companies Act, including monetary fines.

While Sebi norms provide for penalty of up to R25 crore, the penalty under the Companies Act can be from R5,000 to R5 lakh.

Sebi will look into the final compliance status and begin the process for undertaking necessary action against the non-compliant companies.

National Stock Exchange of India Ltd (NSE)

Securities and Exchange Board of India ( SEBI )