A company director? Get ready for government's mega KYC drive on you

The Narendra Modi government is ready with its next big move to crack down on shell companies, clean up Corporate India and prevent those in top management from fleeing India fearing prosecution.

The Ministry Of Corporate Affairs is set to launch a mega drive to do a KYC of company directors--that will at the minimum include passport, PAN number and contact details. All of this information will have to be updated annually by the company secretary or chartered accountant at the time of filing annual financial statements.

Besides this, there will be another form for the physical address of the company, which again will have to be updated annually by the company secretary. This is being done to crack down on the creation of new shell companies.


Injeti Srinivas, Secretary, Ministry Of Corporate Affairs, talked about this initiative in an exclusive interview to ET Now and said as many as 33 lakh company directors would be registered as part of the mega KYC.

There will be a separate form for foreign nationals, but even they will have to be registered with the ministry. The mega KYC drive can be rolled out any day.

Injeti Srinivas said both these forms--that is the physical address of the company and the other on all requisite information on company directors--would have to be "religiously and diligently" updated by the chartered accountant and/or by the company secretary.

He said this is one of the ideas that has come about after the Nirav Modi-PNB scam.