Playing it safe, the CA Institute has postponed its CA Foundation exams by a month and set the new date as July 24 against the earlier planned date of June 24.

This postponement has been done given the ongoing Covid-19 situation. Given that some States — who are faced with a difficult pandemic situation — are looking to open their lockdowns a little slower than what was anticipated, Nihar Jambusaria, President, Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), told BusinessLine.

Intermediate, final level exams on schedule

However, he added both Intermediate and Final level exams from July 5 as planned earlier.

"We postponed it (Foundation exams) only because some governments may like to go slow on opening the States. For example, the governments of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu may not open up to June 30. Then it will be cutting it too fine for us", he noted.

The CA Foundation exam is the first stage or the entry-level exam to become a chartered accountant. Only 12th pass candidates are eligible for this exam. Graduates and postgraduates cannot appear for this exam. As per the revised schedule, the CA foundation exams will now be held on July 24, 26, 28 and 30.

"Today, we are seeing that lockdowns are opening a little slowly than what we had anticipated. While Maharashtra, Delhi and Gujarat has opened, but Karnataka and Tamil Nadu may take little more time. By June 30, the indications we are getting is that everything should open. So we thought we should not take the risk of holding the CA Foundation exams on June 24. Since we are starting inter and final exams as scheduled on July 5, we decided to keep the Foundation exams on July 24 immediately after the Final exams are over", Jambusaria said.

Jambusaria highlighted that new Covid-19 infections are coming down every day, and in the next few days, the daily count may even come down below 1 lakh.

"In fact, a number of parents have approached us requesting that if possible the CA exams should not be postponed to September or November and be held in July itself", he said. Nearly 3 lakh students are set to appear for the upcoming edition of CA exams, including Foundation, Inter and Finals.

In a sign of improvement in the Covid-19 situation, India has reported below 2 lakh daily Covid new infections for the past few weeks.

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