The Ministry of Corporate affairs is a three tier organizational set up having its headquarters at New Delhi, Regional Directors at 4 regions and Registrar of Companies in the States and Union Territories. Every artificial person registered as a Company is obliged to file forms, applications and returns as stipulated in the Companies Act,1956. The MCA-21 program has enabled such E-Filing process, which provides the Corporate world with a lot of advantages like:

1. Registering a new Company and filing the documents from the place of business.

2. Easily accessing the public documents of a Company.

3. Filing the periodic returns of a Company and making online payments.

Earlier the important documents of a Company like the Memorandum of Association of a Company, Articles of Association of a Company, charge documents etc were maintained by the ROC (Registrar of Companies) offices in paper form, which have now been converted into electronic format.

The MCA-21 project offers various services such as:

• Registration of Companies
• Filing of forms , returns and Balance Sheet
• Registration of charges
• Inspection of documents
• Investor grievance redressal

Some of the terminologies which gained importance in the E-Governance project are:

CIN

DIN

Digital Signature

SRN

CIN –Corporate Identification Number

CIN is nothing but a 21 digit unique identification number allotted to a Company.

Eg : U72200TN2004PLC052490

The first alphabet denotes whether a Company is Listed or Unlisted. It is L for Listed and U for Unlisted.

The next 5 digits indicate the state Code

Next 2 digits represent the State

Next 4 numeric –Year of incorporation of the Company

Next 3 digits- to state whether it is a private or a public company

And the last 6 digits denote the registration number of the Company.

DIN-Director Identification Number

Din denote a number which is allotted to every director or proposed director of a Company. It is like a PAN number. But DIN has its importance that only Directors of a Company hold this number. DIN is a pre-requisite for filing of certain documents by the Company. No other number can be used as an alternative for DIN. This number is allotted by the MCA DIN Cell of NOIDA on an application being made.

Hence any individual who is a director or is proposed to be a director of a Company shall have a DIN. This number is a mandatory requirement for all Directors of Indian Companies whether they be citizens of India or not. But this number is not required for directors of foreign Company having branch offices in India.

DIGITAL SIGNATURE:

As physical documents are signed manually, the e-forms also needs to be signed. Thus the electronic form of signing a document is known as Digital Signature. A Digital Signature Certificate is a certificate which is used to prove the identity of a person electronically. These certificates are issued by the licenced CA(Certifying Authorities). There are different classes of DSC available namely-Class 1, Class 2 and Class 3, depending upon the security and other criteria. Each DSC has a validity period after which it has to be renewed. The Digital Signatures are legally admissible in the Court of law.

SRN-SERVICE REQUEST NUMBER

As, mentioned earlier, when there is filing of the documents electronically, it is also needless to mention that we also need to keep a track of the documents filed, the status of the documents filed etc. The SRN helps us in this. Service Request Number is nothing but the number which is generated specifically corresponding to the particular form which has been filed. In general parlance it is also known as the Challan Number.

Eg:A51216483

When a payment has been made or form has been filed, the transaction status can be traced easily in the MCA website using this Service Request Number.