Auditing firm Price Waterhouse (PW) has named four of its partners answerable in the Satyam fraud case. Besides Srinivas Talluri and S Gopalakrishnan, PW has named P Shiva Prasad and C H Ravindranath. The four partners will have to reply to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI)’s show-cause notice by April 2.

This is for the third time that the accounting regulator has extended the deadline given to members of PW to respond to its notice. In its reply to ICAI, it had said that only its Bangalore office was involved in the matter, while its offices in Kolkata and New Delhi were not answerable in this regard.

ICAI president Uttam Praksah Agarwal said the former CFO of Satyam, Vadlamani Srinivas has also been given time up to April 9 to respond to the notice, while senior vice president of internal audit cell in Saytam, VS Prabhakar Gupta, has already submitted his written statement.

Agarwal said the auditors had requested a reasonable and realistic time considering the volume of records. Asked whether ICAI would give more time to the respondents, he said, “I cannot say anything about further adjournments.”

ICAI had issued notices to the auditors in January, asking them to respond in 21 days. The deadline was extended to March 2, after a request by the auditors.

Agarwal said ICAI could not give its final report on the Satyam case till KPMG restated the accounts. In any case, ICAI cannot take action against either PW or the chartered accounts of Satyam since they are not registered with ICAI.