Prafulla Chhajed

Prafulla Chhajed is an Indian chartered accountant and the former president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India for the year 2019–2020.

During his term of office, he faced a backlash from students demanding provision for rechecking of examination results.

Controversy

During his term of office on 23 September, 2019 chartered accountancy students organized massive protests named "Dear ICAI please change" at over 200 institute branches across India and on social media demanding among other things right to re-checking of CA exam answer sheets. At present as per ICAI regulations, re-checking of answer sheets is not allowed. Students have been demanding this right since 2018. A protest was also called in December 2018 but after assurance by the council and formation of a committee to review the examination process the protest was called off. However, the committee became defunct soon after students called off their protest, without holding any meeting or submitting any report. Students were able to gather support of many public figures which includes Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Past President of ICAI Mr. ND Gupta, renowned expert of financial market Mr. Motilal Oswal, Mr. Mohandas Pai, CA Raghav Chadda, etc on social media. Many students uploaded answer sheets on social media alleging gross errors in valuation. Even multiple choice questions were wrongly checked. The institute said it is in the process of implementing controls like digital evaluation, real-time evaluation among other measures to improve the existing system. With each passing day, the crowd was getting bigger as supporters from different parts of India started reaching Delhi to join the protest. Even one of the council member from central region, Mr. Anuj Goyal joined the protest against his own council. Seeing no respite, the institute has communicated its intention to set up an independent committee to study the demands of the students. 7 faculties member which includes Accounting expert CA Parveen Sharma, CA Bhanwar Bhorana, CA Neeraj Arora, CA Mohit Jain, CA Pankaj Garg, CA Sachin Gupta and CA Raj Kumar deposited their Membership certificate with ICAI as symbolic protest and insisted that they will take it back only after reforms actually takes place. Chhajed was of opinion that any changes can only be made by the parliament of India in due course and that it could face many legal hurdles. He was the worst President of ICAI since 1949.