Active Company Tagging Identities in India
A new rule 25A has been inserted in the Principal Rules pertaining to Active Company Tagging Identities. Additionally, e-form ACTIVE has been inserted in the Principal Rules after e-form INC -22.
The Rules came into effect from February 25, 2019. Every company incorporated on or before December 31, 2017 is required to file the particulars of the company and its registered office with the MCA in e-form ACTIVE on or before April 25, 2019.
The e-form ACTIVE is majorly a pre-filled form where the details of a company as available with the MCA gets populated automatically based on the filings made by the company with the Registrar of Companies. Therefore, a company first needs to ensure that all its filings with the MCA are complete and proper only then the e-form ACTIVE can be duly submitted.
In fact, any company which has not filed its financial statement or the annual return or both would not be able to file the e-form ACTIVE unless such company is under management dispute and the Registrar of Companies within whose jurisdiction the registered office of a company is situated has recorded the same on the register.
The objective of MCA is to geo-tag the registered office details of companies through the latitude and longitude details which means attaching data to the exact location of the office.
Basis the concerns raised by the users, MCA is looking into it and coming up with appropriate solutions to resolve these issues so that the filings can be done smoothly.
Since the financial year 2017-18, there has been a drive to crackdown the shell companies and the companies that are non-compliant. Initially, MCA struck off from the register of Registrar of Companies, those companies which defaulted in annual filing for a continuous period of two or more financial years. This was followed by the disqualification of directors of defaulting companies.
Subsequently, the individuals who had been allotted director identification number in India, were required to provide details and complete their KYC with the MCA.
In a similar manner, the registered office of a company is meant to be the premises where its statutory records and registers are maintained as well as its recorded address where the government authorities or any other stakeholders can communicate.
Whereas as per the trend noticed in past investigations into shell companies, either the exact address of the registered office of a company does not exist or there are too many companies registered on the same address. There is no doubt that e-form ACTIVE will help the MCA to locate the exact location of a registered office and to a great extent, it will help in depreciating the use of false addresses by shell companies.
The expected outcome of these initiatives is to create a transparent and compliant India Inc. and to make it trustworthy for public as well as to the global market.