Professional misconduct under the Chartered Accountants Act applies only to conduct tied to a member's professional role, not private commercial dealings.

A Chartered Accountant is subject to disciplinary action only where the impugned conduct is connected with his professional capacity or with an activity recognised as being done in practice under the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949. Section 21 permits inquiry into professional or other misconduct, and Section 22, read with the schedules, preserves that framework, but it does not extend disciplinary control to purely personal commercial dealings outside the profession. Conduct arising from a private share sale and similar transactions, even if morally questionable, was held not to amount to professional or other misconduct, and no disciplinary penalty was warranted.

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Issues: Whether a Chartered Accountant's conduct in a purely personal commercial transaction, unconnected with his professional practice, can be treated as professional or other misconduct under the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949 and visited with disciplinary penalty.

Analysis: Section 21 empowers the Council to inquire into professional or other misconduct, while Section 22 treats acts or omissions in the Schedules as professional misconduct and preserves the wider power under Section 21. Read with the definition of a Chartered Accountant being one in practice, the scheme of the Act shows that disciplinary control is attracted where the member acts in a professional capacity or in an activity that he is entitled to undertake as a Chartered Accountant. Regulation 78 illustrates such professional functions. Conduct wholly outside that sphere, even if morally blameworthy, does not become misconduct for the purposes of the Act merely because the actor is a Chartered Accountant. The respondent's alleged conduct arose from a private sale of shares and other commercial dealings, not from the discharge of any professional function.

Conclusion: The respondent's conduct did not amount to professional or other misconduct under the Act, and no disciplinary penalty was warranted.

Final Conclusion: The reference was answered by holding that only conduct connected with the member's professional role is amenable to disciplinary action under the Act, and the respondent escaped penalty.

Ratio Decidendi: A Chartered Accountant is subject to disciplinary proceedings only for conduct connected with his professional capacity or with an activity recognised as being done in practice; purely personal or commercial conduct outside that sphere is not misconduct under the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949.

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