By Sudhir Tiwari
As a regulator and enabler for corporate growth in the country, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs has been working on two key initiatives, to reform the legislative framework and to embark on e-Governance initiatives that will facilitate service delivery in a user friendly, efficient and economic manner.
The Ministry has implemented a holistic end-to-end e-Governance project called ‘MCA21’ for registry related services carried out in the offices of Registrar of Companies, Regional Directors and MCA Headquarter, specifically focusing on starting a business, doing business and closing of business. The project has infused a new era in Corporate-to-Government interaction.
It was formally launched on March 18, 2006 by the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh. Some of the key aspirations of the stakeholders, including convenient, ‘anytime, anywhere access’ has been achieved by harnessing the right technology tools in the project. The project has provided the stakeholders easy and secure access to all MCA services and has improved the speed and certainty of services sought. It has set an example in bringing about transparency, quickness and efficiency in the functioning of the Government, and is now regarded as amongst the most successful IT initiatives within the Government.
The project has been running successfully for the last five years with continuous steps for improving the G2B and G2C services. The following table depicts the service maturity and efficiency achieved through this transformation.
The key achievements of the project are procedural uniformity across all offices, transparency, speed and certainty of service delivery, with ease of access, elimination of malpractices inherent with a paper-based system, empowerment of the citizen-investor with authentic data about companies and introduction of e-stamping making incorporation completely paperless. Recent improvements include trouble free peak filing, introduction of a new process to obtain Director Identification Number (DIN) online, a new Complaint Monitoring System, payments by NEFT/RTGS mode from any bank, digitally signed certificates and approvals and introduction of Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL).
Future steps of MCA21 that are being envisaged are integration with trademark registry, introduction of details of unpaid/ unclaimed dividends, integration of LLP e-Governance with MCA21, integrating second cycle of MCA21 comprising Limited Liability Partnership (LLP), Official Liquidator (OL), National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), Company Law Board (CLB), introduction of e-auction and e-Court for OL functions.
(Deputy Director (M&C), with inputs received from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs)
