Resolve MCA-21 issues, government tells LTI Mindtree
New Delhi, July 11, 2023
The government has asked LTI Mindtree to address some of the key concerns of stakeholders on the MCA-21 platform — which range from slow speed, problem in PDF generation to issues coming up in downloads —while exploring the possibility of providing some more flexibility in corporate filings, including on annual filings.
Following consultations with seven stakeholders, where industry players aired their grievances against upgrade of the platform, LTI Mindtree has been told to remove some of the glitches by July 15, while some others need to be fixed by August 1. The company, counted among the leading players in the Indian IT space, has come under fire for its work on the third version (V3) of MCA21, forcing the government to defer some of the compliance and move some of the work offline temporarily.
While its role for “poor programming”, resulting in the bugs, is under the government scanner, the ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) has no option but to get it fixed and offer flexibility till the system settles down. Over the last few weeks, TOIhas highlighted several of the problems in its reports.
Officials told TOI that there were some problems with the users, who had multiple IDs, which is not possible to be used in V3. “Our teams are working to resolve the problem on this front,” a government source said, adding that there was some improvement in the speed, number of filings as well as ticket resolution. But the official acknowledged that the situation wasfar from perfect.
As a result, MCA is considering allowing annual filings in V2 of MCA21, although it will decide on the issue around August 15 since several aspects are expected to be fixed by them. Similarly, an option is to use utilities for annual filings like the income tax portal earlier so that some of the activities can be done offline to reduce the load.
Further, officials said that directors of Indian companies, who are overseas, have complained that they are often unable to get the OTP via SMS, prompting MCA to explore the possibility of providing the facility via WhatsApp. But these are seen to be temporary fixes in a system that has hobbled regulatory functioning and compliance by the corporate sector.
[The Times of India]
