Glitches on MCA portal hassle CA, CS community

Bengaluru: “We are facing a very difficult situation with the changes in MCA21,” a Kolkata-based company secretary said, even as the deadline to complete filing of several corporate forms nears. Chartered accountants (CAs) and company secretaries (CS) TOI spoke with said that that these glitches have been going on for one year, which was when the transition to the new version of the corporate affairs ministry’s website began. All forms other than annual returns have been affected. These include forms like DPT3, where the company is supposed to declare loan and outstanding balance. This was introduced a few years ago. Some other forms are related to allocation of share capital and details of any loans taken from banks.Jigar Shah, partner in JMJA & Associates LLP, said more people are feeling the pain now because the changes are applicable for all companies. The corporate affairs ministry had begun the transition with limited liability partnership firms (LLPs) when it began last year. “The major problem is that we are not able to submit forms. We are getting suggestions like ‘go incognito’ and ‘change password’ if we want to file our documents. To add to the trouble, when there are failures, startups and companies are asked to pay additional fees, and use of our funds are restricted till forms are filed,” Shah told TOI. Many professionals have been giving each other advice like clearing the cache, signing out and signing in again, if they are not able to fill the form.These glitches have resulted in a Twitter trend with the hashtag #V3errors. Company secretaries are using the microblogging site to highlight their concerns. One CA tweeted that he had raised his complaint on March 16 and even on March.24, his issues were not looked into. IT firm LTIMindtree has been managing the website through the transition. This is not the first time a government portal is making the news for glitches.LTIMindtree, in a statement, said that users must adapt fully to the changes on the portal for seamless filing. It also went on to say that the portal is working fine.“Even the process of digital signatures of the forms has undergone a change and now only users who are registered on the system post KYC, are allowed to sign forms, to ensure traceability. Additionally, V3 of the portal has been built using online web forms (as compared to offline PDF forms in V2), which enables users in online checking of data entered, pre-filling of master data, validations through external data sources like CBDT and continued linked form filing,” the company said.