Against the decision taken by the government to bar the companies that failed to file the annual returns or financial statements in the MCA21 online registry for consecutive three years from accessing the online registry, several cases were filed before several courts.
As a result, a need has been arisen to give the defaulters another chance to make the default good. The government has introduced a new scheme called as Condonation of Delay Scheme, 2018 which will be active for three months duration starting from 1st January 2018 to 31st March 2018.
During this period, all defaulting companies will be given a chance to file the overdue documents that are due for filing up to the 30th June 2017.
The companies that have been removed from the list of defaulters under the section 248(5) of the act will be excluded from the list. The same is applicable to the companies that have been struck off from the list.
Procedure to be followed
According to the notification issued by the Government of India, the following procedure will be followed:
- The status of the DIN of the disqualified directors is in deactivated state as of now. It will be activated temporarily so that they can file the overdue documents. The activation will done only for the valid period of the scheme,
- Before fining the overdue documents, the company has to pay statutory filing fee and other fee as per the section 403 of the Act read with Companies Rules 2014 (Registration Offices and fee).
- After filing the documents under the scheme, the company is supposed to file form e-CODS 2018 and the fee of 30000 INR before the last date.
- If a company doesn’t file the overdue documents and form e-CODS and the same is not taken on record in the MCA21 registry till the last day of the closure of the scheme, then it will be liable to be deactivated on the expiry of the scheme.
- If the name of the defaulting company has been removed from the register of companies under section 248 of the act and the company has applied for revival under section 252 of the act, then the DIN will be reactivated only in case all the overdue documents have been filled.
The Condonation of Delay Scheme 2018 brings a good opportunity the defaulter companies. As such, there is no declaration about the possibility of extending the same. Hence, nobody should miss it.