E-governance plan to cover all 20 RoCs by July

All of the country's 20 registrar of companies' offices are likely to be brought into the government's e-governance project, MCA21, by mid-July.

Currently, 12 of the 20 RoC offices have been brought on board, including the two largest ones which are located in New Delhi and Mumbai.

The government had earlier fixed April-end as the deadline to hook all the RoCs into MCA21. The delay was mainly because the government chose to iron out minor problems that cropped up during MCA21's implementation in the first 12 RoCs before taking it to the remaining RoCs, a Ministry of Company Affairs official said.

The MCA is the central government ministry that has been entrusted with task of implementing MCA 21.

Electronic filing of documents is the key feature of MCA21, which aims to bring about a paperless environment, shorten the time taken by the MCA to provide services, and provide greater transparency.

Other than implementation irritants, the MCA also had to create infrastructure to help companies without adequate infrastructure to make the transition to electronic filing of documents.

When the rollout started, the government planned to establish over 50 physical front offices (PFOs) manned by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) personnel to help companies without adequate infrastructure to file documents electronically. TCS has been given the contract to provide the software framework for MCA21.

Subsequently, the MCA decided to supplement the PFOs by inviting private parties to run facilitation centres following authorisation. Guidelines to provide private parties with an operating framework would be issued by the government shortly, the MCA official said.

According to the original estimates, the whole project has cost the government Rs 345 crore, of which Rs 314 crore went to TCS to implement the project. TCS will also support the project for six more years.

The government's big benefit from the project would be a move away from a paper-based system of receiving and storing documents.

Officials at MCA say that RoCs receive more than 60 million sheets of filings annually. Once the deluge halts, demands for additional space are also expected to stop.