STATE STATE Vs. J K GHOSH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a Reference under Section 21(1) of the Chartered Accountants Act and a curious case in many respects. The respondent is one J. K. Ghosh who, we are informed by the learned Counsel for the Institute, has now ceased to be a member. Against him, the complaint was that he gave a certificate that one Ashutosh Basu had served him as an audit clerk from 2nd January 1941 up to 2nd March 1951, whereas the said Ashutosh Basu had been serving under another person called Chowdhuri in the same capacity from 1st December, 1941 up to 31st March 1951. It appears that before the last certificate Ghosh bad issued another certificate in favour of the said Ashutosh Basu in which he stated that Basu had served under him up to 15th November 1950. Be that as it may, it will appear from the dates I have mentioned that there was an overlapping as between the alleged period of service under Ghosh and that under Chowdhury as regards the major part thereof and it was that overlapping which put the Institute of Chartered Accountants upon enquiry and resulted in the present proceedings.

(2.) The history of the matter is set out in some detail in the report of the Disciplinary Committee. It appears that, in the first instance Ashutosh Basu made an application for admission to the First Chartered Accountants Examination to be held in November, 1950 and in support of that application he submitted a certificate from Chowdhury. The application did not succeed, inasmuch as Chowdhury was found to be not entitled to take any Audit Clerk at all. Thereafter Ghosh sent a letter to the Institute stating that Basu had served under him as an Audit Clerk from 2nd January, 1941 & the letter ended with the request that Basu's audit service under him might be registered. The registration asked for was made taut only with effect from 22nd October, 1947 which was the date from which Ghosh himself had become entitled to take in and train Audit Clerks. It was when Basu made a second application for admission to the Chartered Accountants Examination to be held in 1951 that the overlapping between the period of his alleged service under Ghosh and that of his alleged service under Chowdhury came to the notice of the Institute.

(3.) The usual enquiry under Section 21 of the Act was held by the Disciplinary Committee of the Institute and I may say at once that the findings recorded by the Institute which the Council ultimately accepted appear to me to be strained to a degree. It is quite obvious that the Audit Clerk could not have served his two masters at the same time if he was to attend office during the normal hours of attendance. But the plea put forward by Ghose was that the clerk had attended his office not during the usual hours of attendance but in the afternoons and that he had served him for about four hours a day. He pleaded ignorance of the fact that the clerk was simultaneously employed under another master.