CFA exam in India on: Delhi HC

Around 7,000 Indian students registered with the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) institute can heave a sigh of relief, now that the Delhi High court(HC) has granted them permission to appear for their exam in India scheduled for June 3.

The Court has stayed the All India Council for Technical Education's (AICTE's) order banning CFA's Indian operations, but only with respect to the stay on examination. It ruled that all the other issues of application and registration et al would be heard later.

The court has asked the CFA to file counter affidavits and rejoinder till September 20. The CFA institute had, on May 24, moved the Delhi High Court seeking a stay on AICTE-notice to wind up its operations in India.

S R Mallela, member Board of governors, Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India (ICFAI), said: "ICFAI welcomes the interim relief given to the students to appear for the exams. Other aspects of the Guwahati High Court's judgement still remain and can be resolved later."

The order comes at a time when approximately 2,000 students are said to have left the country to other destinations to take the exam, others who were planning to fly to neighbouring destinations by Friday might cancel their plans.

Meanwhile, CFA has clarified that the three options it gave its students""cancel their examination enrolment for June 2007 and get a refund of the enrolment fees; write the examination in December (only level-one); or take the examination on June 3 at a location outside India and get a reimbursment of the travel cost up to $ 300 "" stand intact.

"The students who decided not to take the exams this June can come to us in mid-June and get the enrolment fee refund," said S V Balachander, CFA Institute's India Consultant.

Students who clear the CFA examinations are mostly employed as financial analysts by investment banks and broking houses. This year, more students from India will write the examinations than from either the UK or Canada.

Incidentally, the Agartala Bench of the Guwahati High Court, in an interim order on May 28, upheld the notice sent by the AICTE asking the CFA institute to immediately stop all operations in India. In March 2007, Hyderabad-based Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India (ICFAI) had challenged the legality of the US-based foreign institute conducting the course in India, in the Guwahati High Court.

On May 18, the AICTE had served a notice to the CFA Institute to cease its operations in India.