Section 248 of the Companies Act, 2013 (the Act) provides for removal of name of company from the Register of companies, if it is not carrying on any business or operation for a period of 2 immediately preceding financial years and has not made any application within the said period for obtaining the status of a Dormant Company under section 455 of the Act. This was stated by the Union Minister of State for Corporate Affairs Shri Rao Inderjit Singh in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha.

The removal of the name of the company from the Register of Companies is a continuous process and a total of 4,32,796 companies have been struck off during last five years and its year wise details are as under:

Year	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21	2021-22
Number of Struck off Companies	2,26,166	1,12,797	43,912	Nil	49,921

The Minister stated that there is no rule making power provided under section 59 ‘Voluntary liquidation for corporate persons’ in the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016. A dormant company is covered under the provisions of section 455 of the Act, the Minister stated.

The number of Companies having dormant status as per such provisions, during the last five years are as under:

Year	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21	2021-22
Number of dormant Companies	451	362	570	81	116

As per information provided by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, no such measure has been taken to address industrial sickness.

Removal of company names under Section 248 continues, with extensive strike-offs and dormant status under Section 455. Removal of a company's name from the Register of Companies is governed by Section 248, which permits strike-off where a company has not carried on business for two consecutive financial years and has not applied for dormant company status under Section 455; administrative data show substantial numbers of strike-offs over five years and separate counts of companies granted dormant status, while no rule-making power exists under the voluntary liquidation provision of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code and no targeted measures have been reported to address industrial sickness.