If Options have impacted CA final results, we will reconsider ....says ICAI President!

Ever since the CA final results were declared on July 19th, there has been an outburst of emotions ( mostly anger ) in our profession..the members and students being most vocal in expressing their shock and dismay at the barely 3% passing result in CA final exams. Many brilliant students have not been able to make it and in may CA firms, where more than a dozen articles had appeared for CA final, not even a single student could make it!!!!!!!!!!!!
And so, when i got a chance to interview our ICAI President Mr Amarjit Chopra on the evening of July 20th ( which will be telecast on Bloomberg UTV today ) , i could not resist asking a question on the CA exam results and what had gone wrong? .......And i must appreciate that the ICAI President gave a comprehensive, straight and blunt answer ...here is what he said about the poor CA final results:
Question; On whether ICAI did some quality control ( or marks cutting )?
Amarjit Chopra:
" Not even a single student, who was passing, has failed...only the students who were failing, have failed....."

Question: Did removal of options play a part in poor results?
Amarjit Chopra:
" If it is due to removal of options, it does raise an issue and we will deliberate it in examination committee......If Options have impacted performane, we will have a look at it . "

Question: On whether students were not upto the mark in their preparations?
Amarjit Chopra:
" If the students have not performed, they have not performed! I have been a Teacher and the Teacher in me will not die. It is important for me that many students do qualify..No hardship is bigger than the hardship of failure. "

Questions: More practical training based questions a cause?
Amarjit Chopra:
" More practical training based questions are being asked and that may also be a reason .. ( for the poor results ) . But that we are not going to change. "

On coaching classes:
Amarjit Chopra:
" Students must introspect on what sort of coaching they are receiving....over reliance on coaching classes is proving to be fatal. "

ICAI goofs up CA exam papers!!!!

Well friends i thought our Institute will get atleast this right...but they seem to want to prove me wrong!! Some major goof ups in the recently held CA exams... here they go:
1. The Hindi language Costing paper of IPCC had to be ' re- held ' because the original paper said
" Please attempt any 5 questions " , while the English language Costing paper of IPCC did not have any options!!!!! Even better or worse for students ( will vary from student to student ), the ' Any 5 questions ' in Hindi did not add upto more than 70 marks!!! Shocking that an examination paper in a professional exam like CA would contain such elementary mathematical errors!!!!!!! Can someone in ICAI tell us who was the PROOF READER??????
2. The Costing Hindi paper story does not end there......it now gets a little serious. The ' re-exam ' of Hindi Costing paper contained 3 questions that were absolutely the same ( repeat, carbon copy..whatever you may want to call ) as the original paper!!!!!! No word, no figure changed!!!! Except the marks...the 3 questions carried a little over 20 marks weightage in orginal paper while in the ' re-exam ' it carried a weightage of 13 marks!!!
Am quite sure everyone would now want to know the name of the person who set this question paper!!!

Felicitation functions and Sychophancy

Was going through the WIRC newsletter and stumbled across 5 - 6 photographs of felicitation of WIRC Chairman, ICAI President, VP etc by different branches...and this is a ritual that is enacted year after year! Hundreds of feliciation functions across the country....why?? Because we elect a New President and VP every year...so we need to showcase them across the country to our 1.5 lakh members!! Does even the PM get felicitated so much? Am sure a cross question will get thrown at me - Whats the harm in felicitating our ICAI office bearers? Simple Answer - No harm, except that the huge amount of money that gets spent on these functions, is out of Members and Students' fees!!! So obviously, the question that needs to be asked is - Why this criminal waste of money? I would think that the President/VP should chair a technical session or deliver their Presidential talk/address to members at the sidelines of a conference...why do we need a seperate/special function for the same?
Maybe the 4 Regions should hold one such felicitation function, if at all...and has anyone ever bothered to even count the attendance at these events??? I have yet to see over 200 members at any such function in WIRC. ( excluding the 22 WIRC members and former WIRC Chairmen and ICAI President ) ...How many general members are interested in these functions???
I have attended every felicitation function held by WIRC over the last 4 years in Mumbai, as our study circle - Pune West has been awarded the best study circle award each time. What bothers me is the sychophancy on display at these functions..our ICAI President is revered as ' God 's gift to mankind ' ....a person who can do no wrong...and many more such flattering adjectives. But hardly ever have i heard any WIRC office bearer/ Branch Chairman have the courage to take on the stablishment/ Central Council and expose its shortcoming. Why? Probably since the Central Grants for the multi crore building projects will dry up...
This is nothing but our version of ' Chamcha Giri ' that politicians do every day....fall at the feet of their leader and what not....... This has slowly but surely and firmly set in within our profession...
The Bottomline - We are increasingly becoming a political body and less of a technical institute! ( which is what the CA Act, 1949 expects of ICAI to be )..but who cares?

Infrastructure for Students..

While our Central Council is busy sanctioning over Rs 100cr for branch buildings across the country, i think we all need to introspect and ask an important question - ' What are we doing for students ' ??? The fees have increased multifold ..( one of my CA friends told me the other day that his sister has paid around Rs 9000 to register for IPCC ...well we paid probably not more than Rs 10,000 for the entire CA course - CA Foundation, CA Inter and CA Final taken together!!! ) but what services ( apart from administrative ) are we offering the students?
So, instead of just complaining, we have decided to be proactive. Along with a few like minded CAs, we have formed a chartitable trust which will work towards providing infrastructure for CA students in Pune...the name of the trust is Pune CA Students Society.
For the just concluded May examination, we made available a reading room in BMCC college exclusively for CA students. And for the November exam, it gets better..our trust has tied up with BMCC and Garware College. Garware college has agreed to provide 2 reading rooms in addition to the one already being provided by BMCC.
Students are the future torch bearers of our profession...they are the ones who need the best possible infrastructure that shall hopefully help them to achieve their educational dreams!
cheers

ICAI vs Arun Giri - Second Appeal - RTI

Have filed appeal with Central Information Commission ( CIC ) against ICAI 's denial of my RTI request to access minutes of Central Council meetings.
Both the PRO as well as Appellate Authority of ICAI rejected my RTI plea on grounds that the information sought was ' Confidential. ' Quite shocking that our Council, that ought to be the standard bearers of corporate governance, does not want to be transparent about its own functioning! What does it have to hide???? Well, my reply in the first appeal to Appellate Authority was as follows:

From: Arun Anandagiri
Date: Mar 2, 2010 2:09 AM
Subject: Appeal under RTI Act
To: npsingh@icai.org

Dear Mr. Singh,

As prescribed under the RTI Act, please find below my appeal to the rejection of RTI application by ICAI.

Facts of Case:

I had requested for minutes of council meetings held from January to November 2009. The same request has been rejected by ICAI on grounds of 'confidentiality' . With regards to the same, I would like to prefer an appeal on the following grounds:

1. Sec. 8 of RTI Act clearly states the 10 instances where an RTI application can be disallowed. The main grounds of disallowance being national security, commercial or trade secret, cabinet papers and personal information … Very Clearly, ICAI ‘s rejection of my application does not fall within any of the sub sections of Sec 8 of RTI Act.

2. ICAI has been established under an Act of Parliament and hence is accountable to not only the members of the Institute, but also the public at large. Since the

ICAI ‘s main responsibility is that of an accounting regulator, the public at large has every right to know about its functioning.

3. 32 out of 40 Central Council members of ICAI are elected by the members directly through general election. Any elected body ought to be accountable to its members who elect them. In this case, the members of ICAI deserve to know the stand that their elected members are taking in the Council vis a vis important issues concerning the profession. Accessing the minutes of the Central Council meeting is the only way to do the same and keep a check on the performance of Central Council.

4. All the discussions and deliberations of the Central Council are matters of public concern and interest and hence far outweigh any ‘ confidentiality ‘ concerns being espoused by the Institute in rejecting my RTI application. To buttress this point, I am reproducing sub section 2 of Section 8 of RTI Act:

“ Notwithstanding anything in the Official Secrets Act, 1923 nor any of the exemptions permissible in accordance with sub-section (1), a public authority may allow access to information, if public interest in disclosure outweighs the harm to the protected interests. “



I am hopeful that after considering the aforementioned points, my appeal under RTI Act would be allowed. Please find attached ICAI ‘s response to my request.

I will also separately courier all the documents to your office. But please be advised that the RTI Act very clearly permits electronic communication.



Regards,

Arun Anandagiri, FCA

Assistant Editor, Bloomberg UTV

Parijaat House, 1076,

Dr E Moses Road, Worli Naka,

Mumbai - 400018

Yet my RTI appeal was rejected , leaving me with no option but to appeal to CIC. We will soon know if ICAI can hide behind the veil of ' confidentiality '.

ICAI spends Rs 70cr on buidings!!!!

Finally got reply from ICAI to my RTI query on the expenditure being incurred on contructing buildings for the past couple of years and it has revealed some interesting info....sample this:

1. 58 building projects sanctioned between Feb 5, 2008 and Feb 11, 2010. From Kashmir to Kanyakumari, building projects have been sanctioned all over the country...no discrimination against any state!

2. 44 of 58 building projects have taken off in last 2 years and atleast the land seems to be in place for these 44 projects.

3. Rs 69cr expenditure to be incurred on constructing these buildings...BUT this does not include the cost of contruction for 24 building projects, since they have not yet been estimated! As per my estimation, assuming a very modest Rs 2cr average contruction cost for these 24 buildings, total cost of all building projects will work out to roughly Rs 117cr!!!!!!!!!!! ( one of my stock broker friend said " this is more than capex of many listed cos!!!!! " ......maybe we should list ICAI as well :)

4. Since many of these building projects are in cities and towns where it would be tough to locate even 100 odd CAs and therefore impossible to raise enough money from local CAs to finance the building cost, the President has shown his benevolence. The President has distributed a largesse/donation of Rs 18.5cr to these building projects from ' President 's Discretionary Fund!!'

If you are a junkie like me who wants to know all the exotic locations where these buildings are gonna come up , leave your mail id in the ' Comments ' section and i will mail you the ICAI reply to my RTI, along with the relevant attachments.

This is my first post and just the begining of a long battle to reform our ICAI 's functioning.