The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) will shortly present to the Election Commission (EC) a uniform accounting and auditing system for political parties.

The ICAI has prepared a format for the disclosure of the entire income and expenditure of political parties. All parties registered with the EC should file their accounts in the format, said ICAI president G. Ramaswamy.

It will be presented to the EC shortly. After the EC's inputs, we will modify it or the EC itself can make changes as it wishes, he said adding that the format would give a comparative chart about incomes and expenditures.

The ICAI's certain accounting standards have to be applicable. At present, parties were not applying it.

Suppose there is any expenditure incurred by the relatives of party leaders. That has to be disclosed separately, which will give more idea about who are all involved, he said.

Once the EC approved the format, the disclosures would be available in the EC domain and, therefore, available for public scrutiny.

System for varsities

Similarly, the ICAI was in talks with the Ministry for Human Resource Development to implement a uniform accounting system for universities and colleges.

The secretary for collegiate education called us to know if a uniform system can be developed for preparing financial statements, Mr. Ramaswamy said.

The Ministry had formed a working group to implement it as that would help in proper identification of sources of funds, including capitation and donations.

The ICAI would continue to focus on capacity building of small and medium practitioners through skill development initiatives.

Steps were taken to create a website for them to create portals and start ICAI Web TV to provide continuing professional education to the members.

It was also popularising the concept of merger among small and medium practitioners to enhance the capacity of firms and review the concept of networking.