The May 2026 results are out — Foundation and Intermediate on 3 July, Final in mid-June — and with a Foundation pass rate of just over 20%, a lot of students are staring at a mark sheet that doesn't match how the paper felt. Here's what ICAI actually lets you do about it, what it costs after the December 2025 fee cut, and the one deadline still open: CA Foundation students have until 2 August 2026, 23:59 IST.
ICAI opens the online application for verification, certified copies, and inspection of answer books shortly after each result, for roughly 30 days. For May 2026, the windows ran level by level — and only Foundation's is still open as this post goes up.
| Level | Window (May 2026 exams) | Status |
|---|---|---|
| CA Final | 19 June – 17 July 2026 | Closed |
| CA Intermediate | 25 June – 23 July 2026 | Closed |
| CA Foundation | 4 July – 2 August 2026, 23:59 IST | Open — closes this Sunday |
Applications go through ICAI's e-Services portal at eservices.icai.org, under Certified Copies / Inspection and Verification for the May 2026 examinations. Each level's exact window is set out in a separate ICAI PDF announcement on the icai.org Students → Examination page.
On 18 December 2025, ICAI's Examination Department announced a sharp reduction in these fees, effective from the January 2026 exam results onwards — so May 2026 is only the second cycle where the new rates apply. Certified copies, the more useful of the two options, went from being a ₹500-per-paper decision to a ₹100-per-paper one.
Both apply across Foundation, Intermediate, Final, and Post Qualification Course exams. If you're a Foundation student on the fence because of cost, the maths has changed: all four papers' certified copies now cost what a single paper used to.
The single most important thing to understand: ICAI does not offer revaluation. Nobody re-reads your answers and re-judges their quality. Verification, done under the CA Regulations, checks three mechanical things — that every answer you wrote was actually evaluated, that the marks add up correctly, and that the total was transferred to the mark sheet without error. Students do occasionally gain marks this way (an unevaluated sub-part or a totalling slip is not unheard of), but it is a clerical audit, not a second opinion.
Certified copies are where the real information is. For ₹100 a paper you see exactly what the examiner saw — and, more usefully, exactly where marks were cut: the step you skipped in a costing solution, the section number you cited wrongly, the two-line answer that needed five. If you're carrying a 38 or a 39 into your next attempt's preparation, that evidence is worth far more than the fee.
A note on the RTI route you may see discussed in student forums: following court rulings, answer-book copies can also be sought under the Right to Information Act. The dedicated e-Services window above is the purpose-built (and now cheap) path, so for most students there's little reason to go around it while the window is open.
If you're at Intermediate or Final and didn't apply in time, there's no extension mechanism through the normal window — the practical move is to put that energy into the September/November 2026 attempt. The exam form window (covered in our exam form guide) closed in July, and ICAI's free Mock Test Paper series for the September cycle is already running — full schedule in our MTP guide.
And whether or not you ever see your May answer book, the lesson certified copies teach is the same one every marking scheme teaches: examiners award marks step by step, for method, workings, and cited provisions — not just final answers. Building that discipline into practice answers now is the highest-leverage thing you can do between here and September or November.
Sourced from ICAI's Examination Department announcements on icai.org: the level-wise Verification & Certified Copies/Inspection notices for the May 2026 exams, and the 18 December 2025 announcement revising verification and certified-copy fees; result dates and the Foundation pass percentage cross-checked against ICAI's results portal coverage (caresults.icai.org) via Careers360, Zeroinfy, and CA Test Series. CA Grader is not affiliated with ICAI — deadlines and fees are exactly as notified by ICAI and can change by circular, so verify against icai.org / eservices.icai.org before paying or relying on a date, especially the 2 August Foundation cut-off.
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