Under Section 139(2) of the Companies Act, 2013, an INDIVIDUAL auditor may be appointed for a term of FIVE consecutive years, but an AUDIT FIRM (a firm of auditors) may be appointed for a term of:

Section 139(2) of the Companies Act, 2013 limits the tenure of auditors: an INDIVIDUAL auditor shall be appointed for not more than one term of FIVE consecutive years (with re-appointment only after a cooling-off / term gap in the prescribed manner), while an AUDIT FIRM may be appointed for TWO CONSECUTIVE TERMS of five years each - i.e., up to TEN YEARS. Rotation of auditors is a corporate-governance reform of the 2013 Act, securing independence. Listed companies and their prescribed class must comply with the rotation. The firm's ten-year (two-terms-of-five) outer limit is a standard numeric.