The Hindu Business Line : Amendment to accountants Bill referred to GoM

THE accountancy professionals may have to wait a while before the Bills governing their professions — Chartered Accountants, Company Secretaries and Cost and Works Accountants — finally gets the Parliamentary approval. The Cabinet on Monday referred the amendment Bill to a Group of Ministers (GoM).

Sources told Business Line that certain doubts were raised on some of the provisions and it was generally felt that the Bill to amend the three professions requires more thinking. They however, refrained from giving the exact arguments put forth for referring the Bill to the GoM. The Ministry of Company Affairs was looking at introducing the Bill in the ongoing session of Parliament. The GoM is yet to be constituted.

The professionals have been raising concern over certain provisions of the Bill, which would affect their autonomy. Some of the provisions, which were troubling them included the powers given to the Centre to direct the Councils of these institutes and, if felt necessary, dissolve them.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) has been fighting against the Centre's attempts to curb its autonomy. One of the issues irking the institute was the proposal that the strength of the Council be expanded from the existing 30 to 40 members. Indications are that the Ministry of Company Affairs may agree for 35 members as against the proposed level of 40.

Besides proposing an expansion to the strength of the Council, the Chartered Accountants (Amendment) Bill 2003 also sought to enhance the Government representation in the Central Council of the institute. As against the current ratio of 4:1, the proposed Bill sought to grant a larger representation for Government nominees by applying a ratio of 3:1. The Bill proposed a strength of 40 council members with 30 elected from within the CA community and the rest 10 as nominees proposed by the Centre.

Under the existing Act, the ICAI Council has 30 members — 24 being elected members of the institute from the CA fraternity and the balance six being nominees of the Centre. The ICAI has not been in favour of granting a larger representation to the Union Government in the Council, as it feared that this might curtail its autonomy.

In fact, the Bill, introduced in Rajya Sabha in December 2003, was referred to the Standing Committee on Finance on August 24, 2004, and these amendments were after considering the recommendations of the Standing Committee.

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