The Company Law Committee constituted by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs in September, 2019, inter alia, to further decriminalise the provisions of the Companies Act presented report today to the Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs, Nirmala Sitharaman by Injeti Srinivas, Secretary, Ministry of Corporate Affairs, who chaired the Committee.

The other members of the Committee included:

T K Viswanathan, Ex-Secretary General, Lok Sabha;

Uday Kotak, MD, Kotak Mahindra Bank;

Shardul S Shroff, Executive Chairman,

Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co;

Amarjit Chopra, Senior Partner, GSA Associates;

Rajib Sekhar Sahoo, Principal Partner, SRB & Associates;

Ajay Bahl, Founder and Managing Partner, AZB & Partners;

G. Ramaswamy, Partner, G. Ramaswamy & Co.;

Sidharth Birla, Chairman, Xpro India Limited;

Ms. Preeti Malhotra, Group President, Corporate Affairs & Governance, Smart Group

and

K.V.R. Murty, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Corporate Affairs (Member Secretary of the Committee), a press release by PIB said.

According to the media release, the Committee took note of the progress made consequent to the Companies (Amendment) Act, 2019, which had resulted in de-criminalisation of 16 minor procedural/technical lapses under the Companies Act, 2013 into ‘civil wrongs’, and adopted a principle based approach to further remove criminality, in case of defaults which can be determined objectively and which, otherwise, lack the element of fraud or do not involve larger public interest. Alternative methods of imposing sanctions have also been explored and recommended by the Committee, in some cases.

Download the report here. (PDF)

—India Legal Bureau