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In a bid to generate greater awareness and confidence on their state of readiness, the Corporate Affairs Ministry (MCA) plans to soon come up with a simple web based form for companies and limited liability partnerships (LLPs) to confirm their readiness to deal with the Covid-19 threat.
The web form — to be named CAR (Company Affirmation of Readiness towards Covid-19) — would have to be filed by authorised signatory of companies and LLPs on March 23, according to Injeti Srinivas, Secretary, MCA.
Companies/LLPs will be required to report compliance using this proposed form.
Since companies and LLPs are major employers, especially in urban areas, their full cooperation and participation are most essential to fully realise the object of social distancing as a means to contain the spread, morbidity and mortality due to the disease, according to the Ministry.
As part of disaster management to meet the urgent and severe health emergency, all companies are “expected and strongly advised” to put in place an immediate plan to implement the “work from home” policy as a temporary measure till March 31, after which the position will be reviewed by the appropriate authorities as per the evolving situation, the MCA has said.
Board meetings
Already, the Ministry has relaxed the rules for meetings of Board of Directors and dispensed with the necessity of holding physical meetings on matters relating to approval of financial statements, board report, restructuring etc up to June 30.
The Ministry is also now examining other relaxations under the Companies Act 2013 in view of the Covid-19 threat.
Experts’ view
Amit Maheshwari, Partner, AKM Global, a tax advisory firm said, “I am not sure what purpose these forms will achieve and who in the Ministry will review them.
“We are in the middle of one of the worst health and economic crisis in our working lives and yet they have added one more compliance.
“With Work From Home (WFM) there is a genuine issue in filing forms due to Digital Signature being not available and this looks like an impossible compliance in the current environment.”
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