A key panel of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) could wrap up its review of the books of crisis-ridden Gensol Engineering and IndusInd Bank in about six months, the institute’s president Charanjot Singh Nanda said on Wednesday.
While Gensol is facing allegations of fraud, the crisis at IndusInd Bank has stemmed from discrepancies in its forex derivative portfolio.
Usually, if the ICAI’s Financial Reporting Review Board (FRRB) concludes that the financial statements of the entities that are being reviewed are “not true and fair”, it refers the matters to the institute’s disciplinary committee for subsequent action against the auditors concerned.
Nanda was announcing the Global Capability Centres (GCC) summit series being hosted by the institute on June 27-28 in the national capital. This summit will be organised in Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Hyderabad between August 2025 and February 2026.
Responding to a question on the Byju’s case, Nanda said the matter is being heard by the ICAI’s disciplinary committee. The FRRB, which had examined Byju’s financial statements for 2019-20 and 2020-21 after the alleged corporate governance lapses there, referred the case to the disciplinary committee for deciding on action against auditors.
The institute will reconstitute its disciplinary committee for the current year by Thursday, Nanda said. Typically, the disciplinary committee has four benches of five members each. Two of the members in each bench are government nominees.
Nanda said the ICAI, along with capital markets regulator Sebi and the National Stock Exchange—is working towards devising a framework to detect potential fraud or lapses in listed companies early. A group comprising senior officials of the ICAI and Sebi, among others, has been set up for this purpose, he added.
Domestic “Big Four’
As for the government move to facilitate the creation of large home-grown accounting and advisory firms in India comparable to the ‘Big Four’, Nanda said this could be realised through tie-ups of Indian firms with the global ones and through merger of some domestic firms, among others.He said as the country moves forward to create these larger entities, some regulatory support would be required.
Currently, the Big Four—EY, Deloitte, KPMG, PwC—along with Grant Thornton and BDO dominate the Indian audit ecosystem.
“We have the talent pool and we are fully equipped to achieve this,” he added. Earlier this month, the Prime Minister’s Office held a crucial meeting on facilitating the creation of the domestic ‘Big Four’.
Nanda said the institute has set up a group to promote India as a global accounting and finance hub for global capability centres (GCCs).
India currently hosts over 1,800 GCCs that collectively employ more than 1.9 million professionals and contribute over $64 billion a year to the global economy. “This is not merely a success story of scale; it is a story of value, trust, and leadership,” he said.
