Data discrepancy is seen to be the biggest problem afflicting the portal. For instance, there are issues related to filings as several companies have found data of another company when they downloaded the form after filling up their details.”There is a basic privacy issue for companies as data is all over the place,” said a source.
Several foreign companies, which have Indian arms, are facing compliance difficulties, another source said.
Besides, problems related to email IDs and phone numbers haven’t been fully resolved despite the ministry of corporate affairs taking up the issue with the vendor LTI Mindtree, which bagged the contract for Version 3 of MCA21 portal, launched on January 23 last year.
Since then, companies have repeatedly flagged these concerns and the ministry held several stakeholder consultations. Government had expected all the issues to be resolved last summer.
Things had become so difficult for companies that registering a company took days instead of it being done in a matter of hours. “Some of those problems have now been resolved but things are not glitch-free,” an official told TOI.
While physical filing, which was allowed in several cases, has been done away with, filing can take hours, instead of 30 minutes or so, as was the case earlier, a source said.
Although complaints on social media have come down, company secretaries still have their concerns. Some of them complained of their concerns not being addressed despite flagging them several times with the helpdesk.
LTI Mindtree had bagged the contract through a tender process and still has around two years to go. Replacing the vendor midway is not seen as a viable option but officials are keen that the issues are resolved at the earliest. Sources said that there are still several bugs in the system.
The IT company is not the only one to have run into problems with a government contract with Infosys having its share of problems with the earlier version of MCA21 as well as the GST Network.
