Comments
The CA Institute has stepped up oversight on the conduct of its members, having proactively taken disciplinary action on more than 100 erring members over the last one year, its President Atul Kumar Gupta said.
The professional body — which faced criticism in recent years for treating its members with kid gloves — has now geared up its disciplinary mechanism to bring its erring members to book and introduced newer concepts like e-hearings to speed up the processes.
Better monitoring
“Members need to realise that ICAI has stepped up its monitoring and would not hesitate to take disciplinary action on erring members. We are now removing the names of members for a period of one month to as much as entire life. Few days ago, we had removed a member from our register for life,” Gupta told BusinessLine .
He highlighted that as many as five benches are available to take up the matters. “Even during this Covid-19 period, we are regularly doing e-hearings. More than 100 names have been ordered to be removed. Our target is to complete the pendency cases by end of March 2021. Our aim is that any new case coming to ICAI should see the light of the judgment within 365 days. This should serve a deterrent on our members,” Gupta. It may be recalled that the government had few years ago set up the National Financial Reporting Authority (NFRA), which has power to oversee audit of listed companies and large private companies. This move was seen as an effort of the Government to clip the wings of the CA Institute, which was seen to be “very soft” in disciplining its erring members.
Regulatory teeth
Asserting that ICAI still has lot of regulatory teeth, Gupta said “they (NFRA) only have power to debar erring members from conduct of audit. But we have power to remove the member from our register for life”.
Meanwhile, the ICAI had recently removed the names of two chartered accountants — Anil Saxena and Rajeev Kumar Bansal — from the Register of Members for a period of one year for professional misconduct. Gupta also said that ICAI is now running a dedicated portal where the orders of disciplinary action taken against its members are published.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.