Recognised stock exchanges and recognised clearing corporations must maintain and preserve prescribed books of account, documents, and records in electronic retrieval form for at least eight years. Clearing corporations must retain governing board and committee minutes, clearing-member and settlement-account details, transaction records, security and margin deposit records, client-margin collection details, ledgers, journals, cash books, bank statements, and further records specified by the Authority.

Equal, fair and transparent access to clearing and settlement services requires recognised clearing corporations to maintain and publish a non-discriminatory access framework. The framework must state the basis for shareholder stock exchange access and the requirements non-shareholder stock exchanges must satisfy to obtain access. Recognised stock exchanges and clearing corporations must provide equal, unrestricted and transparent access to all persons without favouring associates or related entities.

Utilization of profits and investments by a recognised stock exchange or recognised clearing corporation must comply with norms specified by the Authority. Deployment of funds generally requires prior approval. Treasury investments are exempt where they comply with a governing-board-approved investment policy. Activities involving fund deployment or otherwise unrelated or not incidental to market infrastructure functions may be undertaken through a separate legal entity, subject to the Authority's approval.

Recognised stock exchanges and recognised clearing corporations must maintain a Business Continuity Plan and a Disaster Recovery Site. The arrangements must preserve data and transaction integrity in the manner specified by the Authority from time to time.

Recognised stock exchanges providing co-location facilities must supervise and monitor them to maintain the integrity, security and privacy of data and trading systems. They must ensure equal and fair access for participants and publish quarterly reports on exchange-observed latencies on their websites.

A recognised stock exchange must maintain a procedure to halt trading in the market or an individual scrip in response to volatility or before major company-specific announcements. The trading-halt mechanism is intended to promote fair and orderly trading.

Recognised stock exchanges must establish detailed product-specific position-limit frameworks. Recognised clearing corporations must maintain risk management frameworks aligned with the CPMI-IOSCO Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures, adopt globally consistent margining practices, maintain sufficient capital for key risks, and conduct stress and liquidity testing. Eligible collateral includes cash, specified securities and gold, while cash and cash equivalents must constitute at least 50% of total liquid assets. Clearing corporations must also be ring-fenced from holding companies and maintain additional capital for orderly recovery or wind-down.

Trading hours are determined through cost-benefit analysis, capped at 23 hours and 30 minutes daily, with settlement required at least once a day. Clearing corporations must collateralise mark-to-market losses on open futures contracts at regular, risk-assessed intervals during trading. Recognised stock exchanges and clearing corporations must maintain risk management systems and infrastructure adequate for their trading hours and settlement arrangements.

Every recognised clearing corporation must establish and maintain a Settlement Guarantee Fund to guarantee settlement of trades executed on a stock exchange. The fund corpus must meet the prescribed minimum based on monthly stress-test value or USD 1 million, whichever is higher, and must be adequate to address clearing member defaults. Periodic stress tests must assess corpus sufficiency. An Authority-approved framework must govern contributions by clearing members, the clearing corporation and stock exchange, and provide for replenishment following a shortfall.

A recognised stock exchange must establish an Investor Education and Protection Fund in accordance with requirements specified by the Authority. This forms part of the general obligations applicable to recognised stock exchanges under the Market Infrastructure Institutions regulatory framework.

Prior approval of the Authority is required before a recognised stock exchange or recognised clearing corporation introduces a new category of securities or offers settlement services for any new category of securities or other permitted financial products. Regulatory consent is therefore a precondition to expansion of products admitted or settlement services offered.

A recognised stock exchange must use a recognised clearing corporation for clearing and settlement of its trades under an agreement between them. It must also extend its arbitration mechanism to resolve disputes or claims arising from the clearing and settlement of trades executed on the exchange.

Every recognised market infrastructure institution must identify and allocate core and critical functions among critical operations; regulatory, legal, compliance, risk-management and investor-grievance functions; and other functions, including business development. Schedule II sets out the functions allocated to each vertical. Functions and personnel within the regulatory, legal, compliance, risk-management and investor-grievance vertical must be ring-fenced from critical operations and other functions.

Recognised market infrastructure institutions must constitute functional committees, oversight committees and any further committees specified from time to time. The Authority determines the composition, quorum and functions of these committees. Effective 1 November 2024, the framework expressly identifies functional and oversight committees, replacing the earlier general requirement to establish committees as specified.

Recognised market infrastructure institutions must ensure that governing boards, directors, committee members and key management personnel comply with the Code of Conduct in Part B of Schedule I. Breach of the regulations or Code of Conduct, or a conflict of interest, may lead to action including removal or termination. Such action may follow an institutional reference or be initiated on the Authority's own motion, subject to a reasonable opportunity to be heard.

Recognised market infrastructure institutions must maintain boards comprising non-independent directors, public interest directors and a managing director. Public interest directors must elect the chairperson and cannot be fewer than non-independent directors. Director appointments require prior approval, while specified nominees of broker dealers, clearing members and depository participants are barred, subject to exceptions for nominees of scheduled commercial banks or public financial institutions. Public interest director and managing director tenure, age limits and reappointment procedures apply. Boards must document conflict-of-interest procedures and regularly assess board and individual director performance.

Recognised market infrastructure institutions must continuously ensure that directors, key management personnel and shareholders are fit and proper. Fitness requires fairness, integrity, financial integrity, good character and honesty, and absence of prescribed disqualifications, including relevant convictions, pending regulatory recovery proceedings, insolvency, financial unsoundness, wilful default, regulatory restraints, and securities-market-related orders. Listed institutions and acquirers share responsibility for shareholder fitness where the acquired holding reaches the prescribed threshold.

Listing of securities by a recognised market infrastructure institution requires prior approval of the Authority. After obtaining approval, the institution may apply to any stock exchange for listing. Regulatory approval is therefore a precondition to initiating a listing application, while listing may be sought on any stock exchange once that condition is satisfied.

Recognised market infrastructure institutions must submit their shareholding pattern to the Authority quarterly within fifteen days after each quarter ends. Disclosures must identify the ten largest shareholders, with their number and percentage of shares, and name shareholders who acquired shares during the relevant quarter. This establishes periodic transparency over significant ownership and new share acquisitions.

Recognised market infrastructure institutions must maintain an adequate shareholding monitoring mechanism for continuous compliance with applicable shareholding conditions. Monitoring must operate at all times and requires ongoing oversight of shareholding arrangements rather than periodic or reactive verification alone.