Students' protest against ICAI enters 4th day; Congress, AAP extend support

Hundreds of accountancy students protesting against the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) for the last four days have received supports from opposition parties and several chartered accountants. The students are protesting since Monday demanding better transparency in the paper evaluation process.

They are demanding an amendment to Regulation 39(4) of the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949. According to the regulation, students can't demand revaluation of answers by the ICAI. They can only demand re-totalling of marks and can't question the merit of not awarding numbers for a particular answer.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Aam Aadmi Party leader Raghav Chadha extended their support to the students and have also asked other political parties to join them.

Gandhi on Wednesday said the aspirants were alleging errors in the evaluation of answer sheets. "Across India 12 Lakh CA students are fighting for their right to have their exam papers re-evaluated by ICAI. Given the widespread reports of errors in the evaluation of answer sheets, this demand is justified and should be supported by all political parties," Rahul Gandhi tweeted.

Chadha also joined the agitating accountancy students in front of ICAI on Wednesday to express solidarity with their demand of re-evaluation of answer sheets.

"To become a CA is an arduous process. I find it distressing that so many students are raising concerns over alleged irregularities in the exam evaluation process. I urge MCA and @ICAI to address these concerns with transparency and provide relief to aggrieved students," Chadha said on Twitter.

The students started protest was staged against the alleged discrepancies and errors in the evaluation of the papers.  The students demonstrated outside the ICAI office in ITO here, alleging that paper evaluators have deducted marks for no reason and even correct answers were marked as wrong.

The students have made #dearICAIpleasechange and #icaipresidentmissing trending on Twitter.

ICAI secretary Rakesh Sahgal told CNBC-AWAAZ that the examination body acting as per rules and regulation and follows complete transparency. The students can avail answer-sheets via RTI and ICAI rules also allow them to get their marks reevaluated if they claim that step-wise marking is not followed.

On September 21, the ICAI published an announcement on its website that read, "It has been brought to our notice that certain adverse reports relating to the system of evaluation of answer books of CA exams are doing the rounds in social media. In this connection, following reforms which have been put in place recently are brought to the attention of the stakeholders in respect of the ICAI examination system."

The ICAI announced reforms in the evaluation of answer-sheets on September 21. However, faculty members and students termed them vague and non-transparent.

Rejecting the ICAI reforms, faculty members, like Neeraj Arora and Parveen Sharma, requested students to join the protest at the ICAI's Delhi office to demand a fair evaluation system. Since then, students are holding protests in several places, like Durgapur, Siliguri, Bhilwara, Hyderabad and Jaipur.

ICAI conducts examinations twice a year – May and November. Results for the test held in May were announced in August, after which many of the students got their answer sheets through RTI enquiries, reportd PTI.

Chartered accountant Neeraj Arora, who is also a member of ICAI, said the students compared the answers they had written to the ones released by the institute as model answer keys and found many discrepancies in evaluation, according to PTI.