Q.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) was given statutory status under the SEBI Act in the year:

SEBI began as a non-statutory watchdog and was later empowered by a specific Act of Parliament.

Option (b) is correct. The Securities and Exchange Board of India was originally established in 1988 as a non-statutory body, without independent legal powers of its own. It became India's statutory capital-market regulator only when Parliament enacted the SEBI Act, 1992, which gave it the power to register and regulate market intermediaries, frame regulations, and take enforcement action. Option (a), 1988, is the year SEBI was first set up, but that was before it had statutory powers — the question asks specifically about the Act that gave it those powers. Option (c), 1996, is the year the Depositories Act was passed (relevant to the separate Depository System chapter), not SEBI's own founding Act. Option (d), 2000, has no such significance for SEBI.

Confusing SEBI's original (1988) non-statutory formation with the later (1992) Act that actually gave it statutory, enforceable powers — the two dates are both genuine and both examinable, but for different facts.