How can we rely on a Ministry as volatile as MCA, which brings something with a bang and then silently creeps in to correct the same without any indication?

Aditi Jhujhunwala

The Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) came up with the finalised rules on Companies Act, 2013 after comments from the stakeholders on the draft rules on and from 27 March 2014 without bearing any date or notification number on the same as the same was apparently not published in the Official Gazette. However, all the rules were supposedly effective from 1 April 2014. Subsequently, one by one all the Rules were being notified and by now corporates had started taking action based on the Rules already available on the MCA portal. To the surprise of all—the notified rules contained changes as from the so called final rules earlier available on the MCA portal. Therefore, what appeared before though were final rules, but what appear now in the Gazette are actually the final-final rules!