What is MCA?

Also called: Ministry of Corporate Affairs

The Ministry of Corporate Affairs is the central government ministry that administers the Companies Act and the LLP Act, and runs the portal through which all company filings are made.

Its V3 portal handles incorporation, annual filings and event-based forms. Company incorporation runs through SPICe+, a single integrated form that also obtains PAN, TAN, GSTIN, EPFO and ESIC registration.

The ministry publishes every filed document, which means a company's financial statements are public and searchable by anyone.

Why it matters

Anyone — a customer, a competitor, a bank — can look up your filings. Being behind on them is visible from outside the company.

A worked example

What a supplier can learn about a private limited company from the public MCA register before extending ₹10,00,000 of trade credit.

Illustrative figures. Your own numbers will differ — that is what the quote is for.
Authorised and paid-up capital	Visible
Current directors and their DINs	Visible
Registered office address	Visible
Charges registered against the company's assets	Visible
Date of the last annual filing	Visible
Any strike-off or dormancy notice	Visible

A company whose last annual filing is three years old, with a charge registered over its receivables, is a different credit risk from one filed up to date — and both facts are free to look up before the goods leave the warehouse.

The statutory position

Each figure with the provision it comes from, so it can be checked.
What	Position	Source
Scope	Administers the Companies Act 2013 and the LLP Act 2008	Allocation of Business Rules, Government of India
Portal	MCA21, through which all company and LLP filings are made	Ministry of Corporate Affairs
Public register	Company master data, charges and filing history are publicly viewable	Section 399, Companies Act 2013
Registry of charges	Charges created over company assets must be registered within 30 days	Section 77, Companies Act 2013
Director disqualification	Five years, after three consecutive years of a company's non-filing	Section 164(2), Companies Act 2013

Not to be confused with

These get used interchangeably, including by tools that should know better. They are different things.

ROC

The ROC is a state office under the MCA. You file through the MCA portal; the ROC for your state is the office that processes it.

Income Tax Department

Entirely separate. MCA filings do not satisfy any income tax obligation, and a company files annually with both.

Questions people ask

Is my company's information public?

Much of it is. Directors, registered office, authorised and paid-up capital, charges registered against assets and the filing history can be viewed by anyone through the MCA portal. This is worth knowing before assuming a company arrangement is private.

What is V3 and why did my login stop working?

MCA21 has been migrating forms from the older V2 system to V3, in batches. A form you filed last year may now live on the other platform with a separate registration, which is the usual reason a login that worked before suddenly does not.

Can I check a company before doing business with it?

Yes, and it costs nothing. The master data view shows whether the company is active, when it last filed, and whether any charge is registered over its assets. For a first large order on credit, it is the cheapest diligence available.

What usually goes wrong

Assuming a company's financial filings are confidential when they are on a public register
Not checking a counterparty's MCA record before extending credit, where a charge or a strike-off notice would be visible
Letting the company's email on MCA21 go stale, so statutory notices are never seen
Failing to register a charge within thirty days of creating it, which leaves the lender's security unperfected
Assuming the V2 and V3 portals share a login, and missing a deadline while sorting it out