As per the provisions of the Companies Act, prosecutions are filed by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) through Registrar of Companies against such companies which have not filed Financial Statements from time to time and there are 11,082 number of prosecutions filed by the MCA during the said period for non-filing of financial statements.

This was stated by Shri Anurag Singh Thakur, Union Minister for State for Finance & Corporate Affairs, in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.

The Registrar of Companies (RoCs) has power to remove the name of such companies from the Register of Companies, which have not filed Financial Statements or Annual Returns for a continuous period of two immediately preceding financial years provided they have not applied for the status of obtaining Dormant, under section 248 of the Companies Act, 2013.

Active companies, including real estate companies which have not filed the financial statements from the year 2014 onwards is as under:

	FY 2014-15	FY 2015-16	FY 2016-17	FY 2017-18
No. of Active companies excluding real estate companies.	107060	135979	82588	135570
No. of Active real estate companies.	4914	7436	3776	7266

During the Financial Year 2017-18 and 2018-19, ROCs had removed/struck off 3,38,963 companies u/s 248 of the Companies Act, 2013 including real estate companies for failing to file Financial Statements or Annual Returns for a continuous period of two or more financial years.

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RM/DKS/KMN

Failure to file financial statements triggers prosecutions and Registrar powers to strike off non compliant companies. MCA pursued enforcement for non filing of financial statements, filing 11,082 prosecutions, while ROCs used powers under Section 248 to remove companies that failed to file accounts or annual returns for two consecutive years and did not obtain dormant status; 338,963 companies were removed in 2017-18 and 2018-19 for continuous non filing.