New Delhi, Apr 20 (PTI) The disciplinary committee of the Indian Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICAI) has concluded hearings in 132 cases in 2022-23 and awarded punishments in 91 of them, Institute President Aniket Talati said on Thursday.

The committee has been entrusted with the task of taking action against chartered accountants for any professional wrongdoing.

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Addressing the media, the President said that the total number of cases registered under the new disciplinary committee mechanism from 2007 till March 31, 2023, was 6,766. Of these, 4,249 cases have been concluded, or 62.8 per cent of the cases, ICAI has already taken a decision.

The balance cases are either at the Prima facie stage or at the hearing stage before the Board of Disciplinary Committee.

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In the Council 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.

While talking about disciplinary cases of accounting entities, he said that "ICAI has a zero-tolerance policy against any disciplinary case. In a few of the cases, we have removed members from the register of members for life. We are here to do our best for the profession and we have kept all the possible mechanisms in place to tackle such cases".

In addition, ICAI has already mandated the Audit Quality Maturity Model (AQMM) this year to all the firms falling under the specified criteria. These firms are required to compulsorily self-evaluate their Audit Quality Maturity using AQMM and get it reviewed by the peer reviewer alongside the peer review.

The level of the firm arrived at by the Peer Reviewer will be hosted on the website of the Indian Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICAI).

The Council of ICAI has been working diligently to improve the quality of assurance services provided by its members and mandating peer review in a phase-wise manner, the President said.

The first phase has already been implemented from April 2022, and considering that some of the practice units which required to get themselves peer reviewed under the second phase of the peer review mandate are not ready for the same, the ICAI decided to defer the applicability of the second phase of the mandate by three months to July 1, 2023, as a one-time measure.

The newly-elected President further said that around 4.89 crore UDINs (Unique Document Identification Numbers (UDIN) have been generated and 1.38 lakh members have registered themselves on UDIN Portal.

The innovative concept of a Unique Document Identification Number (UDIN) was developed by ICAI, under which a unique number is now generated for every document certified by a Chartered Accountant in practice and registered with the UDIN portal.

Talati said that the Institute has recently developed and released the “Guidance Note on Audit of Banks 2023” edition, which provides detailed guidance to auditors conducting audits of banks and bank branches.

With more than 3.75 lakh members and over 7.80 lakh students, ICAI is the world's second-largest accounting body. It has 5 Regional Councils, 168 Branches, 45 Overseas Chapters, and 33 Representative Offices.

Further, ICAI said it has always been active in helping Government in its various initiatives and other countries to promote the Chartered Accountancy profession and implement various concepts that are useful in the functioning of accountancy institutes.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)