NEW DELHI - The market regulator Monday barred Gujarat Heavy Chemicals Ltd (GHCL) from dealing in the securities market, saying it had inflated its shareholding in its quarterly filings to exchanges.

Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) also directed GHCL chairman Sanjay Dalmiya, managing director Ravi Shanker Jalan and company secretary Bhuwneshwar Mishra not to buy, sell or deal in the securities market until further orders, the regulator said in a statement.

‘Promoters’ holdings are at significant variance with the actual holdings of the promoters,’ SEBI said, adding: ‘The misleading difference in the holding is as divergent as 17.65 percent being the actual and 40.3 percent being the disclosed holding for the quarter ended September 2008 - difference of more than 100 percent.’

GHCL disclosed holdings of 38.32 percent, 40.42 percent, 40.3 percent and 47.06 percent for the four quarters of 2008-09 respectively, while SEBI’s investigations revealed that the actual holdings were much less than this, the regulator said.

‘It prima facie appears that the ploy of the company was only to inject positive news about the company in the market in order to induce investment by the public,’ SEBI said.

It said GHCL had also said in a statement Feb 16 that Carissa Investment, a significant promoter entity, held 1.6 percent shares of GHCL.

However, in the quarterly filing of shareholding pattern with SEBI for the December quarter, the shareholding is shown six times this or 10 percent of all its shares.

‘The latest quarterly holdings reported by GHCL is apparently an attempt to cover up its string of earlier activities of giving out false and wrong data about shareholding of the promoters,’ it concluded.

GHCL has been asked to file a reply within 15 days.