To be fashioned along the lines of the Administrative Staff College of India, the centre will provide a coordinated approach to corporate governance, sources in the DCA said.

"The proposed centre, mooted by DCA secretary PL Sanjeeva Reddy, will seek to converge all corporate activities and ensure excellence in corporate governance in order to maximise productivity," sources added.

Currently, there is some confusion on what a company should be doing, with various institutes such as the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) and industry associations like Confederation of Indian Industry issuing guidelines to their members on practices to be adopted.

The proposed centre is expected to come up either at Bangalore or Hyderabad. Governments of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have offered land at nominal rates to the department to establish this centre.

The government has already given an in-principle approval for the establishment of the centre. The Department of Company Affairs is currently working out the financial and other details on setting up the centre. DCA secretary is understood to be keen to have the centre ready by the year end, before he superannuates.

Sources added that the Reddy has been interacting with several top industrialists and corporate chiefs to elicit their response to the project.As per plans now being finalised, the government will bear the initial cost of setting up the centre while the operational cost will be borne by the users in the corporate sector which would sponsor their executives and managers for refresher courses in excellence in corporate governance and financial management.

The centre would be under the overall control and superintendence of the department. The faculty would be drawn from various fields including academi and industry.