MUMBAI: Late Thursday, Rajnikant Patel, the managing director & chief executive officer (MD & CEO) of Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), resigned from his post. And with this resignation, total board-level resignations from the 133-year bourse in the last three months reached three. Although the existing BSE management denied that the resignations were linked, people in the know say otherwise — that the exits of its former chairman Shekhar Datta and Patel have some common grounds.

After working with BSE for over seven years and steering the bourse through the process of emerging as a corporate entity from being an association of members, Patel quit as its CEO & MD citing 'personal reasons'. However, some people who are aware of the recent developments inside the BSE, said that Patel quit because of the same reasons Datta had quit in June.

With increasing intervention of the board in BSE's day-today affairs, it was becoming increasingly difficult for Patel to work as a professional manager, a market source said. Jagdish Capoor, who took over from Datta as BSE chairman for his second stint at the top post, said that the two resignations were not linked.

"That's (a common ground for Datta and Patel's resignations) not true at all," Capoor said. Patel quit because of personal reason, while Datta's were professional, he said. Jamshyd Godrej had also resigned the same day Datta had quit, but Godrej quit because he was not able to devote enough time to BSE as a director.