Parliament on Tuesday passed a bill to transform the way the institutes for auditors, cost accountants and company secretaries work, with Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman reassuring the changes will usher in transparency and will in no way affect the autonomy of these bodies.
Rajya Sabha passed the Chartered Accountants, the Cost and Works Accountants and the Company Secretary (Amendment) Bill 2022 by oral vote after voting against all amendments tabled by the opposition.
Lok Sabha settled the bill on March 30th.
While the debate on the bill, including Ms. Sitharaman’s response, lasted about 2 hours and 20 minutes, the process of voting on the 106 clauses and clause-by-sentence amendments took over 30 minutes, accounting for about 18% of the total time the bill passed.
For procedural reasons, when amendments are tabled, each clause must be put to the vote twice, based on the number of Members tabled amendments to each clause.
Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas issued 163 notices amending various clauses of the bill and moved almost all of them during the statutory review of the bill. MP Binoy Viswam also tabled some other amendments. Because all amendments must go to the House for a vote, there were over 200 ballots before the bill passed.
According to Rajya Sabha Secretariat officials, a bill with so many clauses and so many amendments was passed after a long time, with the vote taking a long time.
