NEW DELHI: The National Stock Exchange, India’s premier stock bourse, begun trading in both cash market and F&O segment three hours behind its normal schedule on Monday after a major technical glitch crippled operations at the bourse for the entire first half of the day.Rival BSE did not face any technical issue and continued normal trading. NSE benchmark Nifty surged over 50 points to hit a new lifetime high of 9,722, when normal trading resumed at 12.30 hours (IST). The Sensex rose 200 points in opening trade in the morning and hit a new peak above 31,600.While the index updated normally and NSE claimed normalisation of trade, some traders said they were facing issues with placing orders in the cash market. However, the futures market was trading normally, they said.Government sources said the Finance Ministry has asked NSE and Sebi to submit an interim report on the technical glitch at the premier bourse by this evening.Earlier in the morning, NSE started the session on a disastrous note as stocks and F&O quotes didn’t update and trade orders did not go through. The bourse later announced pre-open sessions twice, but failed to get the same going.Dealers said NSE share prices were not updating since the start and deals were not getting through.“Due to technical reasons in cash market, trading has been stopped in both cash and F&O segments on NSE. The technical team of NSE is looking into the issue. Market re-open time will be intimated shortly,” the bourse said in a statementNSE Chairman Ashok Chawla told ETNow that his team was working on the technical glitch. Chawla, a former finance secretary, said trading would resume flawlessly soon.Finance Ministry said it was aware of data glitch at NSE and was working with Sebi to see that there is any breach, if at all. Ministry sources said Sebi informed it that the NSE glitch was largely a software issue.Ashish Chauhan, Managing Director of BSE, said NSE had enough systems support in place and should be able to fix the glitch quickly. He said BSE will comply with any Sebi decision in this regard.NSE shut down trading in the futures and options segment at 9.55 am minutes after opening trade. Around 10.20 am, the bourse said the glitch had been fixed and announced a pre-open session at 10.30 am and start of trade in both cash and F&O segments from 10.45 am.But the glitch continued and didn’t allow opening of trading on the bourse. The bourse for a second time announced a pre-open session from 11:00 am and normal trading from 11.15 am. Even that too did not materialise, forcing the bourse to announce closure of trading for the day.Market regulator Sebi stepped in to coordinate with the exchange, ETNow quoted sources as saying. Sebi is said to have claimed that all systems were in place to ensure smooth functioning of the market.Market veterans said NSE appeared to have faced multiple problems. Some said it was likely that the backup did not trigger off when the glitch hit NSE."These systems are huge. You have got software components, hardware component and you have the network component. Then there are operating systems. We do not have clarity as to which component failed, because ideally there is a backup. NSE has been regularly running the backups on Saturdays to see they are in working order. But apparently the backup has also not triggered off,” said Deena Mehta of Asit C Mehta Investments.Mehta said if the disruption is only for a couple of hours, it should not have much of an impact. People can always go and hedge their transactions on BSE.“So if you have an open position of NSE, you can always cover it up on BSE and then reverse the transaction when both the markets open. It is a good backup, which is available to the market by having one more system. Sebi and other agencies have always been very emphatic that every broker must have two software systems in their offices, so that if one fails, the other can take over. We should be happy that we have got two systems. Of course, if the disruption lasts for a considerably long time, alternatives can be thought of. But for a couple of hours, I think it is a technology risk which we all need to understand,” Mehta said.