THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Auditing in the co-operative banks and societies has met with a road block following the inordinate delay in constituting the auditors panel as per the Cooperative Amendment Rules, 2014.
For the appointment of auditors under KSR(156) for whom the societies/banks have to pay audit cost, the Finance Department has raised objection as the appointment would add to the financial burden.
According to the amended rules of 2014, the general body of the cooperative banks should have passed the accounts before September 30.
For facilitating this, the Cooperative Department should have completed the auditing by June 1.But the department could not constitute the auditors’ panel yet as the Finance Department objected to the proposal saying that it would require creation of new posts.
The Registrar of Co-operatives has reported that the process of preparation of the panel of auditing firms and auditors is in progress and hence the condition to prepare the panel before 60 days prior to the close of the previous fiscal could not be complied with. The audit of societies is in arrears as there are dearth of sufficient departmental auditors.
At present, the societies cannot pass the audited accounts in the stipulated time frame. Hence the Cooperative Registrar recommended to the government to extend the exemption already granted to the societies from the Kerala Co-Operative Societies (Amendment) Act, 2013 for 2 years with retrospective effect from January 2014 to December 31, 2015. It has also exempted the societies from the Rule 64 of Kerala Cooperative Societies (second Amendment) 2014 which came to force on November 26, 2014.