Company Secretaries Body May Suggest Companies Act Changes

It will recommend changes like the simplification and rationalisation of the Companies Act, deletion of certain provisions of the act and a wider role for the company secretaries.

Speaking to reporters, K R Chandratre, president, ICSI, said, Apart from the above areas we also need parity between the Companies Act and other legislations like Fera.

Facilitating quicker winding up of companies is also a suggestion ICSI is considering, he added.

Chandratre is a member of the panel set up by the finance

minister to present the new company bill.

The institute has been demanding a greater role for company secretaries in the company law, for quite some time now.

 

According to Chandratre, We have been demanding that company secretaries should be authorised to give compliance certificate to private limited companies which will include auditing of accounts and verification of documents.

This, according to him, will enable better compliance with the law and also reduce the work load of the Registrar of Companies (RoC).

There are more than 3 lakh companies in India of which 95 per cent are in the private sector. In fact, Mumbai alone has over one lakh registered private limited companies.

The institute has also made a few recommendations to Sebi like expanding the securities audit exercise, verification of records relating to securities, greater emphasis on shares transfers and proper corrective action to

check malpractices in the securities market.

He added that further interaction with the Sebi authorities was yet to take place.

Chandratre announced that plans were afoot to decentralise the institute's activities at the regional council level. The institute is also setting up the Centre for Corporate Research & Training (CCRT) at Navi Mumbai.

Through CCRT, ICSI intends to serve the dual purpose of undertaking fundamental research and creating data base in areas like corporate law, capital markets, finance, taxation and economic legislations and also develop professional residential programmes.

According to Chandratre, in the context of the above plans, ICSI is also rewriting its syllabus without losing its core competency in corporate laws.

It has introduced a post membership qualification course (PMQ) which focuses on capital markets and financial services.