300 students fail Chartered Accountant final exam, but pass after retotalling

Students and lecturers have complained that there were many errors in totalling and that past questions were repeated in the final exams conducted by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India last November.

Around 300 final-year students from all over the country cleared either a group or both groups in the final exams after they applied for retotalling. A student who got 7% in a subject cleared the test after his paper was retotalled, with at least 33 marks added when the paper was checked again by evaluators.

Acknowledging the fact that there were bloomers in the valuation of papers, ICAI president Jaydeep N Shah said, "The issue is under the consideration of a committee and should be resolved before the valuation of the May 2012 papers. We have also given instructions to examiners to be doubly careful and check twice or thrice while correcting answersheets."

A student is allowed to apply for a copy of his answersheet and then apply for retotalling. A student has to get a minimum of 40% in each subject and an aggregate of 50% in all the subjects to clear a group. More than 1 lakh students from across the country take the final exams in May and November every year. Of these only 15% clear either a single group or both groups to qualify as a chartered accountant.