MCA planning to shift all company forms to new portal by December

Currently only nine forms are to be filled on the new version, ministry officials cite surge in company submissions on version 3

The Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) is planning to move all filings to the new version 3 of its portal by the end of this year. Currently only nine forms are to be filled on version 3.

While many company secretaries have been raising issues of technical glitches on the new website, MCA officials have said that the new system has seen more form submissions than before. For instance, total LLP filings since April 2022 were 319,000 compared to 281,000 for the corresponding period last year.

“We are slowly migrating to the new version so that it does not cause inconvenience,” the senior official said.  

MCA is also conducting user acceptance testing of the web based forms with the members of institute of chartered accountants as well company secretaries while also taking a weekly review of the new portal with them.

While ICAI and ICSI have also created help desks for users to address issues that the professionals might be facing while using the portal, many company secretaries have raised problems such as inability to register digital signatures, receive one time passwords, generate challans among others.

“There cannot be many user IDs against one email ID. Only one email against one PAN and one digital signature is allowed. We are making everyone identify and this is causing problems,” the senior government official added.

The government has said that most technical issues are one-off cases and it is addressing all valid concerns.

As MCA plans a complete shift to the new version, professionals are requesting for extension of deadlines if there are difficulties faced in the transition phase. “̌While this concept is good and non-compliance would be detected with least human intervention, it should not be done at the cost of ease of doing business,” a Delhi based company secretary said.

Version 3 of the MCA 21 portal has been developed by L&T Infotech. While the LLP module was rolled out in April, for companies it was introduced in August this year, starting with nine forms.

It is a data analytics-driven system that is designed to not just make filings for the companies easier but also enable early detection of lapses in filings.

Through an automated system, the government will keep a close watch on ratios such as debt to turnover, inventory to turnover, or loan to assets as early red flags.

MCA is expected to come up with its first analytical report based on the data collected from the new portal by December 2022.

As part of the Version 3 of MCA21, a MCA LAB is being set up, which will consist of corporate law experts to evaluate the effectiveness of the system.