Auditors in companies should be changed every three years, many suggested, and stressed the need for a Public Oversight Board

When you visit Chandak at the ICAI headquarters, he does not proffer his visiting card. He tells you his firm’s name but asks you not to quote it. Ask him the number of clients his firm has and he merely smiles. As president of the ICAI, he does not sign on any company accounts till his year-long tenure is over. Every now and then, Chandak drives home the point that his profession works under serious handicaps. “I can’t even send a greeting card, in case it is construed as an advertisement,” he complains.

Like lawyers and judges in India, chartered accountants (CAs) have always been placed on a pedestal one step higher than any other profession. The last year has, however, seen Chandak, grey faster than many of his predecessors with accounting scandals of the Enron and WorldCom kind casting their shadow over India too.

When those scandals broke, public opinion was vociferous about the need for overhauling the regulatory framework for accountants. Many people highlighted the ICAI’s poor record in handling disciplinary cases against its members. Auditors in companies should be changed every three years, many suggested, and stressed the need for a Public Oversight Board.

Others recalled that the joint parliamentary committee on the 1992 stock scam had rapped several CAs for shoddy bank audits and called for strict disciplinary action against them. The ICAI’s follow-up action had left a lot to be desired. Added to this, Indian auditors too were part of the ModiXerox- like scandals.

The 100,000-strong CA fraternity, well ensconced under an act of Parliament, suddenly found itself in the middle of a whirlpool. Chandak took over last February when all this started to happen.

Then the finance and company affairs minister Jaswant Singh quickly appointed a committee under former Indian ambassador to the US, Naresh Chandra, to look at a gamut of issues relating to corporate-auditor relationships. Chandak made it to the committee as one of its members, ensuring that the institute’s point of view was taken on record before any recommendations were made.

Chandak actually worked overtime to ensure that the Naresh Chandra committee’s recommendations did not censure the CA community. In fact, after the committee tabled its report, the CA community emerged stronger than before.

Tell Chandak all this and he doesn’t stop defending the institute and himself. “There is no question of me managing to convince the Naresh Chandra committee. But it was time that we as a profession got examined by outsiders,” he says.

But there is no doubt that Chandak knows how to fight the odds. Son of a farmer from Buldhana district in Maharashtra, he migrated to Nagpur in 1960 and qualified as a CA in 1977. He never figured on the merit list either in his school-leaving finals or CA exams. Twenty-five years into the profession and although he is president of ICAI, he doesn’t quite match the stature of predecessors like Y H Malegam or N J Yasaswy.

But Chandak has always been at the right place at the right time. The Nagpur branch of ICAI was inaugurated in 1978 and he became treasurer the very next year. He was the first non-Mumbaiite to head ICAI’s western region. He brought the smaller cities into the mainstream of the institute’s activities and was elected to ICAI’s central council in 1995.

Right now, though, he’s happiest with the Chandra report. The council’s integrity is beyond doubt has been proved now, he says.