Q.Distinguish between a Company Secretary (in employment) and a Practising Company Secretary.

Both are qualified members of ICSI, but they work under very different professional arrangements — one is an employee of a single company, the other serves many clients independently. …

A Company Secretary appointed as a Key Managerial Personnel under Section 203 of the Companies Act, 2013 is a whole-time employee of a single company, bound by an employment relationship and responsible for that one company's compliance and governance affairs. A Practising Company Secretary (PCS), by contrast, is a member of ICSI who holds a Certificate of Practice issued by the Institute and practises independently — offering company-secretarial services such as compliance certification, secretarial audit, due diligence, and advisory work to multiple client companies, rather than being employed by any one of them. This distinction parallels the position of a Chartered Accountant, who may either be employed by a single company (for example, as its Chief Financial Officer) or practise independently as an auditor serving many client companies. A key practical consequence of this distinction is that certain functions, such as the Secretarial Audit under Section 204, must be performed by a Practising Company …

Students sometimes treat the two as entirely different professions rather than two different modes of practice open to the same ICSI-qualified individual — both require ICSI membership …