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CA Intermediate guidance: how the paper is cracked, from your own numbers

Chartered Accountancy Intermediate Course — the professional stage of the CA qualification. Conducted by The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), a statutory body under the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949. Suresh knows this paper from the site's own pattern pages — and reads your scores, your mocks and what you haven't touched before saying a word.

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Carries the marks · Advanced AccountingHow to crack CA Inter Advanced AccountingMarks method Open the chapter

The paper · CA Intermediate300 marksNo negative marking

Suresh“Before we plan anything: when do you sit CA Intermediate, and how many hours a day do you really have?”

Talk TypeEnd & get my plan06:12

Ends in a plan

Stages

First paper

300 marks

Marking

No negative marking

Your guide

Suresh, free

How it's decided

CA Intermediate, stage by stage

Three times a year — January, May and September sittings. Pen-and-paper at ICAI centres. Every paper runs three hours for 100 marks, with the MCQ section attempted on an OMR-style answer sheet within the same sitting.

Group I — Advanced Accounting, Corporate and Other Laws, TaxationThe group that unlocks articleship

300 marks across three papers. Clearing this group alone, together with the ICITSS courses, lets you register for articleship and begin earning practical training credit while Group II is still pending. That makes it the group most candidates attempt first.

Group II — Cost and Management Accounting, Auditing and Ethics, Financial Management and Strategic ManagementThe group that completes the level

300 marks across three papers. Both groups must be cleared before the Final examination can be attempted, but they need not be cleared in the same sitting or in order.

Articleship — two years of practical trainingSupervised practice under a practising Chartered Accountant

Begins after Group I and the ICITSS courses. Two years under the New Scheme, down from three. Six months of it may be served as industrial training in the second year.

Self-Paced Online Modules — SET A, B, C and DMandatory between Intermediate and Final

SET A (Corporate and Economic Laws) and SET B (Strategic Cost and Performance Management) are compulsory; SET C is an elective from a specialist list, and SET D covers multidisciplinary and soft-skill areas. All four must be passed before the Final examination.

CA Final — two groups of three papersThe qualifying examination

Six papers including Financial Reporting, Advanced Financial Management, Advanced Auditing, the two tax papers, and Integrated Business Solutions — a multidisciplinary open-book case study. Passing, plus completed training, admits you to membership of ICAI.

The papers

2 papers, and how each is marked

Group I — Advanced Accounting, Corporate and Other Laws, Taxation

300 marks3 hours per paperNo negative marking

Clearing this group plus the ICITSS courses admits you to articleship

Marking: None. There is no negative marking on the objective portion at Intermediate level, so every MCQ should be attempted.

Six questions per paper, one compulsory; 70 marks descriptive plus 30 marks of case-scenario MCQs

Paper 1 — Advanced Accounting100 marks · 180 minPaper 2 — Corporate and Other Laws100 marks · 180 minPaper 3 — Taxation100 marks · 180 min

The group that most candidates take first, because it is the one that starts the articleship clock.

Group II — Cost and Management Accounting, Auditing and Ethics, Financial Management and Strategic Management

300 marks3 hours per paperNo negative marking

Both groups must be cleared before CA Final can be attempted

Marking: None. There is no negative marking on the objective portion at Intermediate level, so every MCQ should be attempted.

Six questions per paper, one compulsory; 70 marks descriptive plus 30 marks of case-scenario MCQs

Paper 4 — Cost and Management Accounting100 marks · 180 minPaper 5 — Auditing and Ethics100 marks · 180 minPaper 6 — Financial Management and Strategic Management100 marks · 180 min

The group candidates underestimate.

Where the marks come from

Where CA Intermediate's 600 marks come from

Advanced Accounting100 marks · 16.7%

Group I. Twenty-odd Accounting Standards plus company-level accounting — amalgamation, internal reconstruction, buyback, branches. The standards are examined as application to short fact patterns, not as recitation, and the company chapters are format-driven and therefore drillable.

Corporate and Other Laws100 marks · 16.7%

Group I. Part I is the Companies Act, 2013 and the LLP Act across twelve chapters and carries 70 marks; Part II is the General Clauses Act, interpretation of statutes and FEMA for the remaining 30. Answers are marked as provision, application and conclusion.

Taxation100 marks · 16.7%

Group I. Two independent 50-mark halves — Income-tax Law and GST — that share a cover and nothing else. Each half must be prepared as if it were its own paper, and the computation format in both is separately marked.

Cost and Management Accounting100 marks · 16.7%

Group II. Fifteen chapters, almost all numerical, and the most reliably scoring paper in the level for a candidate who drills formats. Standard costing, marginal costing and process costing are the three heaviest blocks.

Auditing and Ethics100 marks · 16.7%

Group II. The paper that decides most Group II results. It is written, it is Standard-driven, and it punishes paraphrase — the marks sit in naming the right SA and using its actual vocabulary rather than describing the idea in your own words.

Financial Management and Strategic Management100 marks · 16.7%

Group II. Two halves of 50 marks each. Financial Management is numerical and formula-driven; Strategic Management is written, short and the quickest 50 marks in the group to make safe.

What changed this cycle

Things last year's advice gets wrong

The New Scheme of Education and Training reduced Intermediate from eight papers to six, taken as two groups of three.
Every paper is now 70% descriptive and 30% objective, and there is no negative marking on the objective part at Intermediate or Final. The MCQs are case-scenario based rather than standalone: a short factual situation is followed by several linked questions, so they test application rather than recall and cannot be prepared for separately from the descriptive syllabus.
Articleship is two years rather than three, and begins after clearing Group I of Intermediate together with the ICITSS courses. Four Self-Paced Online Modules — SET A, B, C and D — must be completed after Intermediate and before appearing in Final.
Intermediate now runs three times a year, in January, May and September, which materially reduces the cost of a failed group.

The chapters that carry the marks

Where a plan for CA Intermediate usually starts

The highest-weight chapters in each subject, linked to their notes. Weights are estimates from previous papers where the conducting body publishes none. Your guide weighs these against your own scores.

Advanced AccountingAll chapters