Let disabled CA examinee to take kins' help in exam:HC to ICAI

The Delhi High Court today asked the Institute of Charted Accountants in India (ICAI) to allow disabled persons appearing for the CA examination to take the their relatives' help in writing the papers for them. Directing ICAI to relax its norms for the disabled CA examinees, a bench of Acting Chief Justice A K Sikri and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw, however stipulated that relatives, helping in writing the examinations, must not be linked to the the charted accountancy or other allied subjects.

The court's came on a plea for quashing of the ICAI fresh guidelines for the examinees with disabilities appearing for this year's CA examination, which began today. The court said the writers for disabled students should not be anyway related with the subjects like Company Secretary (CS), Institute of Cost and Works Accountants(ICWA), commerce or corporate laws. In its order, the court also directed ICAI, which conducts the examination, to allow the examinees to change the writer at any point of the examination, which would continue till May 17.

Making it clear that the court's order is only for this year's examination, the bench asked the examination committee of ICAI to consider the issue and make necessary amendments its guidelines for the examinations in future. According to recent guidelines issued by the institute, a relative can act as writer for the disabled person, there can be only one writer throughout the exams, which continues for over 15 days and the writer should be less than 20 years.

The court accepted the submissions made by petitioners' counsel Pankaj Sinha that it is impossible for students to meet the guidelines of ICAI as this being the exam season, candidates are not able to find writers who could write exam on their dictation as most students below 20 years are busy in their own exam.