ICAI CA Exams 2021: Plea in Supreme Court seeking opt-out option for symptomatic candidates

NEW DELHI: A CA student has filed a plea in the Supreme Court seeking alternative arrangements for the symptomatic students appearing in ICAI CA December 2021 exams. The CA exam day instructions released recently by the institute says that all candidates must ensure before reaching the examination centre that they do not have any symptom or suffer from COVID-19 disease. The CA exams 2021 are scheduled to be held from December 5 to December 19, 2021, in offline mode.

“The application filed by Sanjeev K Arora, a prospective candidate of the CA December exams has sought for directing the ICAI to not call for RT PCR reports from symptomatic candidates and consider medical certificates sufficient for shifting the candidates to the next cycle of examination,” Live Law reported.

The application says, “Insistence on an RTPCR report (within 72 hours) for the examination scheduled to be held from December 5 to December 19, 2021, is impracticable and unfeasible for the students preparing to write the exams as the examination cycle lasts for 15 days and not a single day stint and it is impracticable to get the get the RTPCR report after every 2nd exam,"

The ICAI exam day instructions released on November 08 says, “Those candidates/staff who are not coming with the prescribed temperature limit be asked not to enter inside the venue and where such candidates are being refused entry inside the hall, their details shall be entered in the attendance register.”

In this regard, the application states that for CA students, especially in the case of CA Final students (Old Course) who will be giving their last attempt, the notification does not mention any Opt-Out option for candidates suffering from fever or having COVID-19 related symptoms.

The ICAI notification neither provides any alternative arrangement for candidates who are willing to appear in the examination despite the fever, nor it carries any SoPs for non-Covid-19 fever.

Therefore, the applicant seeks directions to ICAI for providing alternative arrangements in isolation rooms for candidates with a body temperature higher than the prescribed temperature limit.

If not, the plea says, the RT PCR report should not be made mandatory for appearing in the examination. It refers to directions issued by the Court for CA July examination 2021, in which the court directed the ICAI to accept the medical certificates of the candidates for appearing in the exams.