ICAI to introduce new curriculum for CA students

New Delhi: The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) will soon introduce a new curriculum for the chartered accountant (CA) students across the country.

The ICAI has prepared the new curriculum and sent it to the Union government for final approval, CA Aniket Sunil Talati, president, ICAI.

The ICAI president said: "After the necessary approvals on the new curriculum the CA articleship programme will also be reduced from three to two years."

"Currently the duration of the articleship in CA course is three years. Under the provision it is mandatory for the aspirant to undergo the first two years of the training period with a practicing CA firm. However, in the third year, there is an option of choosing between either continuing the training under the same practicing CA or going for industrial training with a CA in industrial employment."

Under the new curriculum, ICAI has notified draft CA Regulations proposing to reduce the time period of mandatory articleship to two years, Talati said.

Besides the Chartered Accountant curriculum, students may see some changes in the subjects like commerce and accountancy, the ICAI said.

Talati said: "With more than 3.75 lakh members and over 7.80 lakh students, ICAI is the world's second largest accounting body. Through its five regional councils, 168 branches, 45 overseas chapters and 33 representative offices, the institute is taking forward its agenda of inclusive growth and continues to add glory to the profession."

Sharing the most important role of ICAI, he said: "The Regulatory framework of ICAI is an intricate system on which the pious, glorious and respectful structure of one of the largest accounting bodies in the world stands. ICAI vigorously and constructively endeavours to make its regulatory and disciplinary mechanisms more robust and responsive together with its disciplinary directorate, financial reporting review board, peer review board, taxation audits quality review board, centre for audit quality."

Talking about disciplinary cases, Talati said: "In a few of the cases we have removed members from the register of members for life. We are here to do best for the profession and we have kept all the possible mechanisms in place to tackle such cases."

The total cases registered under the new disciplinary cases mechanism since 2007 till March 31, 2023 are 6,766, out of which 4,249 cases have been concluded, that is on 62.80 per cent of the cases, ICAI has already taken a decision. The balance cases are either at prima facie stage or at hearing stage before the Board of Disciplinary Committee.

In the year 2022-23, a total of 112 meetings were held of the board of discipline and disciplinary committee, where hearings were concluded in 132 cases and punishments were awarded in 91 cases, Talati said.

He said: "ICAI had conceptualised and developed an innovative concept of Unique Document Identification Number (UDIN) under which a unique number is now generated for every document attested by a Chartered Accountant in practice and registered with the UDIN portal. As on April 12, 2023, around 4.89 crore UDINs have been generated and 1.38 lakh members have registered themselves on the UDIN portal." Talati added: The institute has recently developed and released the 'Guidance Note on Audit of Banks 2023' edition, that provides detailed guidance to auditors conducting audits of banks and bank branches. Also, the institute developed and released the 'Implementation Guide on Reporting under Rule 11(g) of the Companies (Audit and Auditors) Rules, 2014' (Implementation Guide on Audit Trail) that provides detailed guidance on various aspects of this new reporting requirement introduced by Rule 11(g) of the Companies (Audit and Auditors) Rules, 2014."