Former President of ICAI, Shri Amarjit Chopra has stated in an interview to ET CFO that setting up IIAs is not desirable, while being asked about his views on the CA Amendment Bill, 2021 passed by Lok Sabha.
It may be noted that Standing Committee has recommended to establish IIAs on lines similar to IITs and IIMs, to end the statutory monopoly of the ICAI. However, he is of the view that Standing Committee should have come up with some suggestions for improvement in present CA curriculum in case they felt the need for the same, instead of coming up with the idea of IIA.
Further, he has stated that in case the argument of monopoly is to be held against ICAI, then the same argument would apply to Institute of Cost Accountants of India and Institute of Companies Secretaries of India as well, as these two institutes also have no competition in their respective professional work. He has further added that in his opinion all these three institutes are regulators of respective professions and regulatory bodies normally have monopolies, e.g. Bar Council, Medical Council, SEBI and so on.
Amarjit Chopra is also of the view that recommendations by the Standing Committee have impacted the autonomy of ICAI to an extent.
He has beautifully summarised the ongoing situation in a very few words.. ‘some of the suggestions approved by Lok Sabha arise out of certain misgivings with regard to functioning of ICAI and some because of ICAI falling short of expectations of society on certain matters‘.
He has also expressed his views on ICAI’s Disciplinary Mechanism, which is one such aspect wherein public perception seems to be different to an extent from the ground reality. He has always believed that ICAI should display on it’s website whenever an action is taken against erring Members. Had that been followed, misinformation about ‘CAs involved in Satyam case having gone unpunished’, may not have gained ground.
Source: ET CFO dt. 04/04/2022