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NSE IPO Back on Track as SEBI Issues Long-Pending No-objection Certificate
Moneylife Digital Team 30 January 2026
Investor Interest
After years of regulatory uncertainty and repeated delays, market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has finally issued a no-objection certificate (NOC) to the National Stock Exchange (NSE), clearing the way for the country’s largest stock exchange to move ahead with its long-pending initial public offering (IPO).
 
SEBI’s market regulation department, which oversees stock exchanges and other market infrastructure institutions, granted the approval late this week, says a report from moneycontrol. The NOC is a critical regulatory requirement for NSE to formally initiate the IPO process.
 
With the clearance in hand, NSE can now appoint merchant bankers and legal advisers and begin preparing its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP). The listing process is expected to take eight to nine months. The proposed issue will be an offer for sale, meaning the exchange itself will not raise fresh capital.
 
NSE first sought to go public in 2016, proposing to raise around ₹10,000 crore through the sale of shares by existing shareholders. However, the plan ran into serious regulatory headwinds following SEBI’s investigations into governance failures and the co-location and unfair market access cases. The regulator withheld approval, and the draft offer documents were eventually withdrawn.
 
The latest clearance follows a series of developments aimed at resolving long-running disputes between NSE and the regulator. Earlier this month, SEBI chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey said the regulator had given in-principle approval to NSE’s settlement application in the unfair market access case, signalling that the IPO proposal was at an advanced stage.
 
As reported by Moneylife, in January 2024, Ashish Chauhan, managing director (MD) of NSE, with the approval of its board of directors, had written to SEBI seeking an 'amicable' closure to all pending litigation in connection with the Colo scandal of 2015, either by settlement or payment of penalties.
 
NSE had submitted the settlement plea in June 2025. The exchange has agreed to pay around ₹1,400 crore to settle the co-location and dark fibre cases. In its financial disclosures released in November 2025, NSE made a provision of ₹1,297 crore, in addition to the ₹100 crore already deposited with SEBI under a securities appellate tribunal (SAT) order passed in 2023. (Read: NSE's Co-location Scandal: Close Issue, List and Usher Transparency)  
 
While it was earlier believed that SEBI would wait for approval from the high-powered advisory committee (HPAC) on settlements before issuing the NOC, the regulator moved ahead as key internal departments had already agreed, in principle, to the settlement, the report says. 
 
The proposal will now be placed before the HPAC and subsequently before a panel of SEBI’s whole-time members (WTMs) for final approval. Once that process is complete, SEBI may seek withdrawal of related cases pending before the Supreme Court.
 
SEBI had constituted an internal committee in March 2025 to examine NSE’s listing proposal, marking a renewed regulatory review after years of stalemate. Mr Pandey, who took charge as SEBI chairman earlier in 2025, had publicly stated that the regulator would 'apply its mind' to NSE’s proposal and explore ways to take it forward.
 
The Exchange’s path to listing has been closely watched by investors, many of whom had approached the Delhi High Court in recent years seeking directions to SEBI to allow the IPO. NSE’s annual reports repeatedly flagged the absence of regulatory clearance as a key uncertainty.
 
NSE’s regulatory troubles stemmed largely from the co-location controversy, which led to SEBI barring the exchange from accessing the securities market for six months in 2019 and imposing penalties running into over ₹1,000 crore. While the market access restriction ended later that year, additional conditions relating to governance, technology resilience and legal clean-up continued to delay the listing.
 
In October 2024, NSE paid ₹643 crore to settle a case linked to the bypassing of the trading access point (TAP) system, covering itself and several former senior executives. (Read: NSE Pays Rs643 Crore To Settle TAP Case against Ex-chief Vikram Limaye, 8 Other KMPs)
 
Its clearing arm, NSE Clearing Corporation Ltd, also settled a separate regulatory case by paying ₹27.13 crore. (Read: NSE Clearing Pays Rs27 Crore To Settle Interoperability Pact Violation Case with SEBI)
 
With the NOC now issued, NSE’s long-stalled IPO has moved decisively closer to reality. Based on prevailing unlisted market prices, the exchange’s valuation is estimated at around ₹5 lakh crore, which would make it one of the largest listings in India’s capital market history.
 
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