Rajya Sabha clears bill revamping chartered accountancy institutes

All Opposition amendments rejected by voice vote

Parliament on Tuesday passed a bill to revamp the functioning of the institutes of chartered accountants, cost accountants and company secretaries, with Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman asserting that the changes will usher in transparency and will not in any way impact the autonomy of these bodies.

Rajya Sabha passed the Chartered Accountants, the Cost and Works Accountants and the Company Secretaries (Amendment) Bill, 2022 by a voice vote after negating all amendments moved by the Opposition.

Lok Sabha had cleared the bill on March 30.

While the debate on the Bill including the reply of the Ms Sitharaman took about 2 hours and 20 minutes, the process of voting on the 106 clauses and clause-wise amendments took over 30 minutes, accounting for about 18% of the total time taken for passing the Bill.

Procedurally, each clause, if amendments are moved, is required to be put to vote for two times based on the number of Members moving amendments to each clause.

Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas gave 163 notices for amendments to various clauses of the Bill and moved almost all of them during the clause-wise consideration of the Bill. MP Binoy Viswam also moved a few other amendments. As All the amendments are required to be put to the vote of the House, voice vote was taken over 200 times before the Bill was passed.

According to officials of Rajya Sabha secretariat, it was after a long time that a Bill with so many clauses and so many amendments was passed with voting taking substantial time.