The Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICAI) may revise tenure of a company's auditors to deal with audit fraud committed by companies as did by Satyam Computer Services recently. It is also planning to issue guidelines to its members to review periodic record of companies to avoid possibility of alteration in company's balance sheet.

It is to be noted that Price Waterhouse has been associated with Satyam as an auditor for eight years and ICAI recently declined to take any action against it for audit mishandling, blaming management for this fraud.
 
However, ICAI president, Ved Jain said that the regulator would ban any guilty audit house for five years and list of audit criminals would be made available on ICAI's website. ICAI is also planning to have ties with the Security and Exchange Board of India to avoid such financial and audit frauds in future.

It had banned six auditors for five years and above for last three years.

ICAI is also planning to set up a special committee to improve auditing standards in the country. It would also seek help from financial regulators like RBI, Corporate Affairs Ministry and SEBI to make Indian audit standards more effective and pragmatic.

Mr B.M. Agarwal, Chairman, ICAI-Western India Regional Council said, "In the light of the recent developments, our central council will examine the issue of limiting the number of years for which an auditor can be associated with a company. In the case of banks, the Reserve Bank of India has stipulated that external auditors have to be changed every three years. In the case of companies too, such a stipulation may be pertinent."