PRESS NOTE 2/2006

1.The e-Governance project ?MCA-21? is already under implementation and is scheduled to become operational all over the country, in a phased manner by April, 2006. It has already been started at Coimbatore on February 18th, 2006.

2. At present, filing and registration of documents is a statutory requirement under the Companies Act, 1956 and the documents/forms are filed manually. It is required to enable filing of the forms through the electronic mode. Therefore, this Ministry has amended the Companies (Central Government) General Rules and Forms 1956 to enable electronic filing of documents. The amended rules have already been notified vide GSR No 56(E) dated 10th February 2006.

3. As such, relevant filings would need to be done mandatorily in every Registrar of Companies (RoC) office in the format prescribed under the new e-Forms from the date of their publication in the Official Gazette i.e. 10th February 2006. This may be by way of e-filing where MCA21 has been launched or manual filing where MCA21 is yet to ?go live?.

4. In order that public is not inconvenienced due to non availability of e-Forms, it has been decided to accept filings through the forms which were in operation before the aforesaid notification, up to 27th February, 2006. However, in the Office of RoC Coimbatore the new e-Forms would be applicable from 18th February 2006.

5. Subject to the para 4 above, during the period starting from 10.2.2006 (the date of notification of e-Forms) till 27.2.2006, documents filed by the users as per the old forms would be accepted by the RoCs. Filing made on or after 28.2.2006, must be through the new e-Forms as brought out in para 3 above.