The Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) has extended the deadlines for companies to submit financial statements and annual reports for the 2025–26 financial year while simultaneously waiving additional fees. This decision was made following appeals from stakeholders who requested extra time to complete mandatory filings.
In a circular dated October 24, the ministry stipulated that companies can file financial statements using various versions of form AOC-4, including consolidated statements, XBRL format reporting (machine-readable digital report), and relevant forms for Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs), until December 31, 2026, without paying additional charges.
The deadline for submitting annual returns via forms MGT-7 and MGT-7A has been extended until January 31, 2027, according to the same circular.
Form AOC-4 is used for providing financial statements to the Registrar of Companies (RoC), with different variants covering consolidated statements, XBRL reporting, and relevant NBFC documents. Form MGT-7 is used for filing the company's annual return, whereas MGT-7A is intended for one-person and small companies.
This extension was a response to concerns raised by company secretaries and other professionals regarding technical issues on the MCA-21 Version 3 portal. The Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI), in its appeal dated October 9, requested an extension until December 31, 2026, without additional fees, citing recurring portal failures and increased compliance requirements due to updated filing forms.
The MCA-21 Version 3 portal is the online platform of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs through which companies submit mandatory filings and access corporate registry and compliance services. ICSI mentioned frequent portal downtime, slow MCA portal response times, including session expirations and automatic logouts during form preparation and submission, difficulties with login, profile updates, and user access management, errors in pre-filled data and data mismatches upon retrieval, problems with linking Digital Signature Certificates (DSCs) and submission validation failures despite correct data entry, as well as difficulties in viewing, uploading, and tracking submitted forms and approvals.