Listing on bourses in regions where companies are headquartered is no longer compulsory.

In a letter to regional stock exchanges yesterday, the finance ministry said it was withdrawing circulars issued in 1977 and 1985 related to compulsory listing.

A Securities and Exchange Board of India committee on delisting, headed by Pratip Kar, had recommended that companies be allowed to decide where to list.

According to market sources, the income from listing was a major source of revenue for most of the bourses like the Delhi Stock Exchange, the Ahmedabad Stock Exchange and the Calcutta Stock Exchange.

The listing income of all the regional bourses was around Rs 50 crore in 2002-03, and the three bourses alone accounted for about half of it.

Companies like Maruti Udyog and the National Thermal Power Corporation, which are likely to tap the primary market this year, will not be required to list themselves on the DSE. Several companies, including IFCI, have written to the DSE for delisting.

Trading in most regional bourses dropped significantly in the last couple of years.

The DSE, which a few years ago made transactions worth Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) a day, hardly witnesses any trading. It has not recorded any turnover for days in a row.

Despite this, market sources said the DSE earned around Rs 8 crore in 2003-04 from listing fees. Most of the public sector companies were required to list on the DSE earlier, contributing about Rs 2 crore to its income from listing.

Big-ticket companies like Punjab National Bank and Bharti Tele-Ventures were forced to list on the DSE because of the requirement imposed by the finance ministry.