Meet the members of SC-appointed panel on Adani share crash

Former Supreme Court judge A.M. Sapre, tasked to oversee a probe into the recent Adani Group share crash and other regulatory aspects for stock markets, hails from Madhya Pradesh and was elevated to the top court on August 13, 2014. He served till August 27, 2019.

The Supreme Court on Thursday decided to set up a six-member committee headed by Sapre to conduct the probe and asked the panel to submit its report in a sealed cover within two months.

Besides the former apex court judge, the other members of the panel will be O P Bhat, retired Bombay High Court judge J P Devadhar, K V Kamath, Nandan Nilekani and Somasekharan Sundaresan.

Sapre, 68, was initially appointed a judge of the Madhya Pradesh High Court on October 25, 1999 and served there till February 10, 2010. He was then transferred to the Rajasthan High Court, where he remained till March 22, 2013.

He was made the chief justice of the Manipur High Court on March 23, 2013 and remained there till October 18, 2023. Sapre was then appointed the chief justice of the Gauhati High Court, where he served till August 12, 2014 before being elevated to the top court.

Among the other members of the panel, O P Bhat is a former chairman of the State Bank of India. Bhat currently is a director on the boards of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd (ONGC), Tata Steel Ltd and Hindustan Unilever Ltd.

Retired Bombay High Court judge J P Devadhar, the third member on the panel, has served as the presiding officer of the Securities Appellate Tribunal.

K.V. Kamat is a former head of the New Development Bank of BRICS countries. He has also been the chairman of Infosys.

Nandan Nilekani, the fifth member appointed to the panel, is a co-founder of Infosys. He has also headed the UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India).

Lawyer Somasekharan Sundaresan, the sixth member of the panel, is a securities and regulatory expert.

His name was recently recommended to the Centre as a judge of the Bombay High Court. The Supreme Court Collegium later reiterated his name for judgeship after the Centre raised an objection.