Dilip Kumar Choudhary Vs Ministry of Corporate Affairs (Delhi High Court)
1. That the Petitioner is a Proprietor of a firm named Kumar Dilip & Associates (Herein after referred to as “Petitioner Firm”) registered under with ICSI (Institute of company secretaries of India). The Petitioner firm is comprises of company secretaries, others professionals engaged in the Secretarial practices. The Petitioner is continuously making efforts in coordination with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs for redressing the problems/issues being faced by its members or the other professionals engaged in Secretarial practices and other Secretarial consultancy.
2. That the Respondent No. 1 is the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and is primarily responsible with administration of the Companies Act 2013, the Companies Act 1956, the Limited Liability Partnership Act, 2008 & other allied Acts and rules & regulations framed there-under mainly for regulating the functioning of the corporate sector in accordance with law.
3. That Respondent No-2 i.e. The Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) is the only recognized professional body in India to develop and regulate the profession of Company Secretaries in India.
4. That in compliance of section 92 read with 137 of the companies act, 2013, the Members of the Respondent No.-2 filed the annual return and various other statutory documents with Respondent No.-1, the same is done through the portal i.e.http://www.mca.gov.in. (Hereinafter referred to as “Website”) It is germane to state that Respondent No.1 vide an update dated 1st February, 2022 on their portal communicated that the website running on version 2 shall be upgraded to version 3 and the relevant form relating to LLP’s shall not be available from 25th February, 2022 till the date of next communication in this regard.’
5. That the new version of the website is complex and not user friendly., It would not be out of place to state that the website created a deadlock where the registration of the new LLP’s came to on halt and various problems are being faced by the user of the Website. These problems were time and again communicated to the officials of the ministry but the officials did not paid any heed to such problems faced by the users of the Website.
6. That the stakeholders are facing many problems on Version 3 which includes but not limited to User Registration, Address does not contain special characters, data migration, security lapse, user data migration from Version 2 to Version 3, Errors in forms including filling, saving, auto retrieval of data, validation of data, uploading of form, missing of attachments in forms, wrong data in output pdf and approval of e-forms etc.
7. The V3 website is having serious issues about which Petitioner has time and again has informed/ or communicated to the Respondent No.1 and Respondent No.-2.
8. That the Petitioner and other users of the V3 portal of Ministry is not able to file/or submit statutory / or mandatory forms owing to the non-working of V3 portal and Website of Ministry. In such a case additional fee shall not be levied on the Companies/ or LLP who are not able to file the forms due to non-working of portal till the time portal started working properly.
9. Therefore, the manner in which new portal is launched by the Respondent No.1 has created ruckus in compliances and its affecting the business of members of Respondent No.2 in large. Hence the Petitioner is left with no alternative but to approach this Hon’ble Court.
Hence, this Writ Petition.
For Amicus Legal Advocates & Consultants
SUSSHIL DAGA(R/2160/2011)
ANURAG KALAVATIYA(R/4536/2010)
M.No.99282-95553; 98296-89999
Email: [email protected]
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A very good approach, badly needed. I too have been affected like so many professionals. We had to abort some partner change in LLPs due to their one month time limit which could not be met due to the portal upgrade, which was not completed promptly, and when completed, was very defective. I have many screenshots of this problem.
Plaintiff should have sought exemplary damages as a class action suit – to compensate every one who suffered.