Chartered Accountant approaches Kerala HC about Technical Error on MCA Portal

A Chartered Accountant has filed a writ petition with the Kerala High Court, citing various technical errors on the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) new V3 portal.

The petitioner, a chartered accountant, complained to the Kerala High Court about bugs on the brand-new V3 portal that the Ministry of Corporate Affairs had just unveiled. Making the MCA portal more user-friendly was the new portal’s primary goal. The portal had a number of well-known characteristics.

The petitioner claimed that the new portal’s errors prevented him from completing his statutory compliances and that filing statutory forms through it is a “time-consuming” process.

One of the key mistakes mentioned by the petitioner was that the portal lacks the ability to save partially completed data; as a result, whenever the internet is cut off while the process is in progress, the user must repeat the entire process, which makes the filing process a time-consuming task.

Numerological errors in automatically generated figures, attachments of specific statutory forms that were filed online becoming attachments of different forms when downloaded, etc. are examples of errors.

In spite of the MCA strictly adhering to the deadlines for compliance, the petition claims that the Ministry failed to provide an error-free and user-friendly portal for LLPs and professionals like Chartered Accountants and Company Secretaries to complete their statutory compliances. Additionally, late compliances are subject to fines, additional charges, etc.

As a result, the petitioner asked the court to order the MCA to fix the portal’s issues. The petitioner also begged the Court to order MCA to waive the additional fee because the delay was out of their control and to refund any additional fees already paid in such circumstances. The petitioner further urged the Ministry to hold off on adding new forms to the V3 portal until the current bugs have been fixed.