₹4,000/month? Even unskilled labour law pays more than this.
ICAI just dropped a draft — CA articleship stipend going from ₹3,000-5,000 to ₹4,000-6,000. Calling it a "historic hike." Let's do the actual math.
The central minimum wage for an UNSKILLED labourer in a metro right now is ₹21,000+/month (2026 revision). A CA article — B.Com/CA-Inter qualified, doing audits, tax filings, MIS reports, 10-12 hours a day — gets paid 4-5x LESS than that. So the law guarantees a manual labourer more than ICAI's draft is proposing for a skilled professional-in-training.
Even the National Floor Wage (₹178/day = ₹5,340/month, unrevised since 2019 — the absolute rock-bottom legal floor) is higher than ICAI's proposed Year-1 rate of ₹3,000-5,000 for most cities.
Globally: the UK scrapped its "training only under a practising CA" rule back in 1973.
Pakistan's CA students get almost double what Indian students get. Nepal is literally the only country paying less than us.
This isn't about whether the stipend went up. It's about whether a ₹1,000 bump over 3 years, against inflation and metro rent, is even close to enough.
ICAI is legally required to take public comments before finalizing this (CA Act 1949, Section 30(3)) — the form is open till 5 August 2026.
Silence = acceptance. If we don't comment, this draft goes through exactly as is.
Take 2 minutes, copy the template below, fill the form.
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/ad7a1d81-f988-4d17-9c28-9dd19561adea
#FairStipendForCA #ICAI2026
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