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BOD 732/2024Not guilty

A branch secretary alleged unproven anomalies in how the branch was run. The Board cleared the secretary.

6 min readJainam Shah

A newly appointed branch secretary wrote to the branch's leadership alleging financial anomalies, without evidence, and circulated the letter widely. The Board cleared him of misconduct.

Held
Not guiltyThe charge was not made out
Forum
Board of Discipline (First Schedule)
Clauses
Item (2) of Part IV of the First Schedule
Decided
File no.
PR/322/2020/DD/279/2021/BOD/732/2024
Source
Original order (PDF)

A member of a local ICAI branch complained to the Institute after the branch's own secretary wrote to its leadership accusing it of financial anomalies, without producing any evidence.1 Four years and one adjournment later, the Board of Discipline cleared the secretary of every charge.

What happened#

A chartered accountant is an executive member of his ICAI branch's managing committee, and midway through the year becomes its secretary.
Seven months into holding that post, he writes to the branch's chairman raising serious, unsupported concerns about how the branch had been run the year before. He copies senior members, past chairmen and the branch's own auditor.
He does not raise any of it inside the branch's managing committee first, or wait for its annual general meeting. Instead he sends the letter out by email to the wider membership and shares it in WhatsApp groups.
A fellow member of the branch complains to the Institute that the secretary has gone public with unproven allegations, damaging the branch's reputation and casting doubt on its whole executive team. He points out that the secretary had once contested branch elections for personal advantage, and had signed the very balance sheet recording these same matters months earlier without raising a word.
The Board of Discipline takes the complaint up years later. The secretary appears before it in person; the complainant does not. The branch's own annual general meeting, held virtually during the pandemic, never saw these allegations raised either, and nothing was put before it to support them. The Board finds nothing proved and clears the secretary.

One line from the letter, quoted in the complaint, shows the kind of allegation this was. Against a catering bill for a students' workshop, the secretary had written:

Bill No. 2267 dated 12th February 2020 of Rs. 70,000/- of 'Cater 2 You' for 'One Day Workshop on MS Excel for Students', but I think Ludhiana Branch never conducted any workshop for students of such a large level. (para 4)

The complainant seized on the phrase "I think": proof, he argued, that the secretary was guessing rather than reporting fact, when the workshop had in fact been held, attendance recorded, and the Committee's own approvals and grants behind it (para 4).

The complainant also made something of timing. The secretary had signed the branch's balance sheet months earlier, along with the rest of the executive committee, without objection — and only raised these concerns six months after that (para 5).

The charge#

  • Item (2) of Part IV, read with Section 22 of the Chartered Accountants Act — the First Schedule's general clause for "other misconduct." It carries no fixed list of acts; it catches conduct that discredits the profession when nothing more specific fits.2

The charge that went forward was narrow: that the secretary had unauthorisedly circulated his letter to the branch's members, its past chairmen and its auditor, thereby maligning the image of the branch (para 6). Two other complaints never became part of it. That the secretary had once contested branch elections chasing "political mileage" (para 3), and that his line about the workshop bill was an unproven assumption dressed up as fact (para 4) — both stayed allegations in the complaint. Only the act of sending the letter was ever put to the Board as a charge.

What the secretary said#

His defence, as the findings record it, was short. Everything he had flagged, he said, was already sitting in the branch's own balance sheet — within the branch's own knowledge — before he ever wrote the letter. He had not concealed anything; he had only put in writing what the accounts already showed. And nobody had raised a complaint against him inside the branch's managing committee, at any point, about any of it (para 10).

What the Board held#

The Board did not rule on whether the specific claims in the letter were true. It asked whether the complainant had gone about disputing them properly, and found that he had not.

Ludhiana Branch had its own forums for a dispute like this — the managing committee, the branch's annual general meeting, or an appeal to the President of ICAI. The complainant used none of them. That year's AGM was held virtually, because of the pandemic; the complainant neither attended it nor put anything before it, then or later, to support his allegations. He went to ICAI's disciplinary mechanism directly instead (para 9).

At the final hearing the secretary appeared in person; the complainant did not. The Board's finding rests explicitly on "the lack of evidence, the absence of the Complainant, and the Respondent's clear and credible submissions" (para 11), and it held:

Accordingly, the Board unanimously holds the Respondent Not Guilty of the alleged misconduct. (para 11)

In its formal conclusion:

in conclusion in the considered opinion of the Board the Respondent is Not Guilty of Professional Misconduct falling within the meaning of Clause (2) of Part IV of First Schedule to the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949 read with Section 22 of the said Act (para 12)

The order#

No punishment follows a not-guilty finding. The Board closed the complaint under Rule 15(2) of the Investigation Rules.3 The complaint had been with the Institute for a little over four years by the time it closed — filed within two months of the letter it concerned, and decided only after one hearing was adjourned at the secretary's own request.4

Why it matters#

This section is ours, not the Board's.

Exhaust your own institution's channels before you go outside them. The Board's finding turned less on whether the letter's claims were true than on the fact that the complainant skipped the branch's managing committee and its AGM and went straight to ICAI. Raise a grievance where the rules put it first.

An absent complainant loses by default. The Board named the complainant's absence at the hearing as one of the three reasons it found no merit in his case. If you bring a complaint, see it through in person.

What's already on a shared record can't be called concealment. The secretary's whole defence was that everything he had flagged was already sitting in the branch's own balance sheet. If you are accused of raising something in bad faith, point to where it was always visible.

This summarises a public order and links the primary source. It is general information, not legal or professional advice.

Footnotes#

  1. CA. Sidharth Gupta (M. No. 530416), of Civil Lines, Ludhiana, was the complainant. The respondent was CA. Hitesh Goyal (M. No. 503976), of Mandi Gobindgarh — an executive member of Ludhiana Branch of NIRC (ICAI's Northern India Regional Council) who became the branch's secretary for the 2020-21 term. ↩

  2. Item (2) of Part IV of the First Schedule to the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949, read with Section 22 of the Act, covers "other misconduct" — conduct that discredits the profession but is not captured by the more specific items listed elsewhere in the Schedule. ↩

  3. Rule 15(2) of the Chartered Accountants (Procedure of Investigation of Professional and Other Misconduct and Conduct of Cases) Rules, 2007 — where the Board finds a member not guilty, it records that finding and closes the complaint. There is no punishment hearing. ↩

  4. The findings were signed by CA. Rajendra Kumar P (Presiding Officer) and Ms. Dolly Chakrabarty (Government Nominee), both sitting in person at ICAI Bhawan, Chandigarh. An earlier hearing on 4th April 2024 was adjourned at the secretary's own request; the case was heard and concluded on 27th December 2024, and the findings are dated 25th January 2025. ↩

Written by Jainam Shah. Found guilty under Item (2) of Part IV of the First Schedule; the Board ordered a not guilty. General information, not legal or professional advice — read the order itself before relying on it.

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