India 2018

262 India 2018
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Corporate Affairs
fairs
THE Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) administers the following Acts
of the Central Government: (i) Companies Act, 2013; (ii) Companies Act,
1956; (iii) Limited Liability Partnership Act, 2008; (iv) The Competition
Act, 2002 as amended by Competition (Amendment) Act, 2009; (v) The
Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016; (vi) The Chartered Accountants Act,
1949; (vii) The Cost and Works Accounts Act, 1959; (viii) The Company
Secretaries Act, 1980; (ix) Societies Registration Act, 1860 and Indian
Partnership Act, 1932 (in Centrally administered areas), and (x) Companies
(Donations to National Funds) Act, 1951.
The Ministry has a three tier organizational structure with the headquarters
at New Delhi, seven offices of regional directors at Ahmedabad, Chennai,
Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi and Shillong, fifteen registrars of
companies, fourteen official liquidators.
Central Registration Centre
The project to transform the processing of company incorporation, e-Forms was
undertaken with one clear objective, i.e., applications for name reservation and
incorporation of a company could be processed and completed within D+1 days
(D=Date of Payment Confirmation) in line with global best practices. The MCA
rolled out the first phase of Central Registration Centre (CRC) in 2016 for
processing name reservation of applicants and second phase of CRC for
processing incorporation of company applicants in 2016. The Government
Process Reengineering (GPR) exercise is in pursuance of the Ministry's objective
of providing greater "Ease of Doing Business" to all the stakeholders and has
resulted in faster processing of incorporation related applications, uniformity
in application of rules, and eradicating discretion.
The time taken for processing company incorporation applications has
been reduced drastically from between 5 to 15 working days in June 2014, to an
average of 0.6 working days in March 2017. Similarly, the processing time for
name availability applications has been brought down significantlyfrom between
5 to 6 working days in June, 2014, to an average of 0.4 days in March 2017. In
addition, more than 90 per cent applications are being approved within one
working day. This has resulted in speed, greater transparency, uniformity and
eradication of discretion.
Ease of Doing Business
The Ministry has prescribed a Simplified Proforma for Incorporating Companies
(SPICe) along with e-MOA (Electronic-Memorandum of Association) and
e-AOA (Electronic-Articles of Association) which eliminates the requirement