Clean-up: 1.63 lakh companies de-registered by govt

Two cities — Mumbai and Delhi — accounted for over a third of the 1.63 lakh companies de-registered by the Modi government, as part of the cleansing act undertaken on companies with suspicious and questionable operations.

While the number of companies de-registered stood at 33,000 in Mumbai, it was 22,863 in the case of Delhi, official data showed.

In the case of Hyderabad, the number of companies de-registered stood at 20,588 and for Chennai, the number was 12,133.

All these four cities — Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad — together accounted for little over 50 per cent of the 1.63 lakh companies de-registered by the Registrar of Companies.

Also, 11,286 companies from Bengaluru and 10,083 companies from Pune were de-registered.

The 1.63 lakh companies have been largely identified on the basis of data mined from the demonetised notes deposited with banks post November 8 last year, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi cancelled the validity of certain high value denominated notes.

It is widely believed that the total tally of 1.63 lakh deregistered companies included 38,000 shell companies.

Interestingly, the term shell/bogus company is not defined under the Indian company law, according to a recent reply to a Lok Sabha question given by Arjun Ram Meghwal, Minister of State for Corporate Affairs.

It may be recalled that Modi had on July 1, on the occasion of the CA Foundation Day event, said that government had de-registered over one lakh companies with suspicious and questionable operations and promised that more action would follow and even tougher ones against shell companies.

The data of 1.63 lakh deregistered companies is the position as of July 12, official sources said. The government has, however, not revealed the exact criteria on which companies were picked up for de-registration.

For deregistering the companies, the government has followed the process under Section 248 of the Companies Act 2013, it is learnt.

The Prime Minister had then said that de-registering fake/shell companies could hurt some political parties and that it required some courage to take such bold decisions for the benefit of the country.

“Those who looted the poor will have to return (their riches) to the poor,” Modi had then said on July 1.

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