The Institute of Company Secretaries of India, through the ICSI Insolvency Professional Agency, has begun enrolling those eligible and desirous of becoming insolvency professionals.
It follows the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code becoming operational a few months ago and the institute being designated as one of the insolvency professional agencies. The ICSI-IPA was enrolling members with 15 years experience, and the enrolment would be valid for six months after which the professionals need to take the examination to be conducted by the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India, ICSI president Mamta Binani said.
Speaking to press persons on the sidelines of a two-day ICSI conference that got under way on Thursday, she said 1,200 members of the institute would be eligible to enrol in the same. Besides company secretaries, lawyers were also expected to enrol. Overtime, graduates would also likely to be allowed to take the examination and get licensed as insolvency professionals.
The demand for such professionals, Ms. Binani said, is expected to be significant as the cases pending before BIFR (Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction) and appellate bodies were set to be handled under the provisions of the code.
The government has introduced the code to consolidate and amend laws relating to reorganisation and insolvency resolution of corporate persons, partnership firms, and individual firms in a time-bound manner. According to the Act, this is for “maximisation of value of assets of such persons, to promote entrepreneurship, availability of credit and balance the interests of all the stakeholders, including alteration in the order of priority of payment of government dues.”
The code stipulates that the cases relating to liquidation or rejuvenation should be completed within 270 days, which includes a one time extension of 90 days, said Ms. Binani. At present, such cases on an average take four-and-a-half years.
On the conference, she said it was the first global congruence to promulgate international corporate governance day. Highlighting the works of ICSI, she said it was offering office space at a nominal fee of Rs. 50 per hour for aspiring company secretaries, as part of an accelerator programme, at its premises in Chennai and Kolkata.
Bengaluru, Noida, and New Delhi would also get such accelerators.
