Snehal Upadhyay-
The Supreme Court today asked the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) if there are any other techniques for determining if a candidate is medically unfit to take the CA exams, which are set to begin on July 5 while hearing three different petitions regarding the upcoming Chartered Accountant (CA) examinations.
The case was heard by the 3-Judge bench consisting of Justices AM Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and Aniruddha Bose.
The petitioners claimed various reliefs including the postponement of the exam, provisions for an opt-out and extra attempts to be provided to the candidates who fail to appear on time due to COVID-19 restrictions as this is the last opportunity for the old syllabus candidates.
The bench rejected some petitioners’ prayers that stated that CA student’s vaccination should be given priority and they should be based on their admit card.
The Apex Court has also asked the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) that if they could adopt another method for obtaining corona negative report certificate other than RT-CPR test certificate from the students appearing for the CA exam then they should, because positive RT-PCR certificate may be difficult for many students.
“RT-PCR is no determination at all. Sometimes it shows negative and person has symptoms”, said Justice Khanwilkar.
The petitioners raised the concern for the Opt-out option in the middle of exams, by arising the issue that if any student gets affected in the middle of the exam cycle, then there should be an option for completing the remaining paper in the next cycle.
“If the competent authority certifies that the difficulty is due to COVID, yes you can”, Justice Khanwilkar said.
The Bench has ordered the ICAI counsel to respond to the issue related to ‘opt-out’ by filing a brief note point-wise today itself.
The Court will continue the hearing on 30th June.
