Snehal Upadhyay-
Around 6,000 students have written a letter to Chief Justice NV Ramana regarding the concern of a 15-days long offline examination for Chartered Accountancy (CA).
The CA examination will start from July 5 as scheduled and overall 3 lakh students will appear in this exam.
The letters highlighted three major concerns which were that firstly, the students aren’t provided with any opt-out option. Secondly, regarding no extension given for old course attempts and thirdly, no additional attempt for the students unable to appear due to COVID-19 has been provided.
According to the letter these concerns were also raised before the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) which has failed to address these concerns.
The letter said that, “Majority of the students that will be appearing for these exams belong to the age group of 18-45 and have not been fully vaccinated yet, this puts the students at a high risk of getting sick during the conduct of the exams. Also, if we have a look at the effects of 2nd wave of COVID-19, it has been more drastic than the 1st Wave of COVID-19 especially on the young population of the country, yet the relief of Opt-Out Option that was provided to the students who appeared for the exams during the 1st Wave of COVID-19 has not been extended to the students who will be appearing for the exams during this wave, making the institute very biased and unjust towards the students.”
The letter hence pointed out on a similar petition was filed before the Supreme Court in last year May, where the Court strongly opposed the ICAI decision to not provide opt-out and had directed the institute to be more flexible and not rigid, as this would be biased towards the students who fail to appear in the exam due to COVID-19.