The government has started a consultation process that will likely reduce the number of forms to be filed by companies under the Companies Act besides consolidating the forms with similar statutory purpose. The concept note from the ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) also seeks public comments on building a framework that will integrate the MCA data with other regulatory bodies such as GSTN, CBDT, SEBI, banks, UIDAI and RBI to eliminate duplicate cross-regulatory reporting by the companies.
Cross-Regulatory Integration
The note specifically seeks stakeholder inputs to review the MCA filing architecture across the entire corporate lifecycle, including entry, operations and exit. Under the proposed reforms, the ministry is planning to harness artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and intelligent pre-filling to deliver an accurate, and error-minimised compliance experience. Additionally, there’s a proposal to rework the compliance requirements based on the size of the company, sector, and risk profile. This will ensure that the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), startups, and small producers are not disproportionately burdened with the statutory filing obligations.
Automation and STP
Further, the ministry plans to expand the list of filings under Straight Through Processing (STP), an automated system under which the e-forms are approved instantly upon submission, thereby eliminating the manual intervention of government officials. “Currently, STP operates only for limited categories of filings. MCA proposes a significant expansion of STP-based auto-approval across the compliance lifecycle,” the note said.
Experts said that the consultation seeks both structured and open-ended feedback from a wide range of stakeholders based on the practical challenges to help shape a compliance framework that enhances ease of doing business while maintaining strong regulatory oversight.
“The consultation seeks to simplify and modernise corporate compliance framework by identifying high-impact reforms across the corporate lifecycle, leveraging practitioner expertise to strengthen and future-proof processes, and unlocking automation through intelligent integration and reuse of database created,” said Anjali Malhotra, partner (regulatory) at Nangia Global.
The note also cautioned that the rationalisation must not compromise the legal enforceability, audit trail, and data integrity of the compliance framework. The ministry has asked the stakeholders to respond by May 15.