Come January 1, all practising chartered accountants will have to register all certificates issued by them with the recently launched UDIN portal.

It may be recalled that the CA Institute had, in an effort to tackle the menace of forged certifications of financial statements and documents, come up with the concept of Unique Document Identification Number (UDIN). The new system had gone live from July 1, but was only recommendatory to start with. Now, this has become mandatory from January 1. Under UDIN, the unique number will be generated for every document certified by a practising CA and registered with the UDIN portal. Regulators and banks can use the portal to check the authenticity of the documents. It had come to the notice of the CA Institute that financial statements and documents are getting certified by “third persons” who are not actually CAs. This could mislead authorities/other stakeholders who rely upon them, it was felt.

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