The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) was planning to open four campuses across the country for three-month residential programmes in soft skills for CA pass-outs.

It had received land for this in Jaipur and Bangalore by the respective state governments, said Ved Jain, president of ICAI. In Jaipur, the campus was 25 acres while the Bangalore campus covered 10 acres.

Both campuses should be operational within a year's time, Jain added.

ICAI was looking to build similar centers in the East and West.

It would soon approach the West Bengal government for around 15-20 acres for the campus, Jain said. Currently, it ran the programme with the National Institute of Financial Management (NIFM) in rented premises in Faridabad near Delhi.

The programme focused on development of personal and professional skills like inter-personal communication and teamwork skills together with problem solving and leadership skills.

ICAI was planning to start a special campus recruitment for course students.

Cost per student was around Rs 96,000 for three months, ICAI would pay subsidy of Rs 48,000 per student.

The average investment per center would be around Rs 10 crore. Around 12,000 students passed the CA finals per year now, and ICAI was hoping to raise this number to 24,000 by 2011.

Each zone would see around 6000 qualifiers and around 1500 students would be on the campus at a time, Jain explained.

He ruled out the idea of a central institute in Delhi as accommodating and managing such a huge number of students at one time would be difficult.