MCA glitches spur Change.org petition to get PMO to intervene

MUMBAI: Company secretaries across India are being asked to sign a Change.org petition asking the Prime Minister’s Office to intervene to ensure the functioning of the Ministry of Corporate Affair’s document filing platform.

This is probably the first time that such a petition has been created for an IT platform in the country. The MCA portal is run by Infosys.

The platform, called MCA21, allows companies to file their documents online. Since Infosys issued an upgrade to the platform on March 27, there have been glitches. Company secretaries say they are unable to meet the filing requirements stipulated in the Companies Act and now have to face the possibility of penalties.

The nearly 1500-signatories are also asking that Infosys’ payments be withheld until the platform is fixed. The petition needs 1500 signatures to be sent.

“We also request the PMO to instruct the MCA and Ministry of Finance NOT TO RELEASE ANY PAYMENT TO INFOSYS ON MCA21 PROJECT, pending if any, unless the MCA / MOF gets satisfactory feedback from all the stakeholders including Professionals,” the petition says.

The petition, which was created 7 days ago, also wants the government to ensure that companies are not penalized for missing the filing dates. The Institute of Company Secretaries of India had also sent a letter to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs to ask it to consider waiving additional fees for documents which could not be filed during their deadline.

Infosys and Ministry officials have said that there were ‘minor teething issues’ with the upgrade and that they were being fixed.