Confirming this, the RoC Mumbai R Vasudevan said the new office would cover 11,480 companies and would have jurisdiction over nine districts.

These will include Ahmednagar, Kolhapur, Nashik, Pune, Ratnagiri, Sangli, Satara, Solapur and Sidhudurg. The Pune office, to be located near the stock exchange, will have around 20 staff members and a RoC.

According to DCA sources, the setting up of separate RoC offices is in line with the finance ministry's plan to carry out decentralisation. "Decentralising the RoC offices would not only bring down the workload but will also assist in implementing a lot of changes being proposed in the Companies Draft Bill of 1997," sources said.

The DCA is in the process of setting up more RoC offices and additional ROC offices in the states. "A new RoC office can beset up only if it will have more than 10,000 companies under its fold," sources added.

In Mumbai, which at present has two full-fledged RoC offices (at Marine Lines and Kalachowki), the DCA plans to set up an additional office at New Bombay.

"It will be a sub-office headed by an additional RoC and having jurisdiction over Navi Mumbai and Thane districts," a DCA official said. The office will cover around 4,000 companies and is likely to be set up within two months.

According to sources, every year around 8,000 to 10,000 new companies are incorporated in Mumbai. "In order to accommodate the new companies and simultaneously keep a watch on the existing ones, it becomes imperative to create new offices," sources added. In fact, the Delhi RoC office is also being functionally divided into two parts. While the first section will handle around 70,000 private companies, the second will handle all the public-sector companies.

Our Pune Bureau adds:

The inauguration of an office of the Registrar of Companies(RoC) in Pune, 10 years after the last one was opened at Coimbatore, could herald the opening of more such offices across the country, officials of the department of company affairs (DCA) said.

At the top of the list of probables are Haryana, since it shares its office with Delhi, while the RoC at Jalandhar serves Chandigardh, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. The officials admitted that there is a demand for more RoC offices even in Maharashtra which has two, and will shortly have a third, when Navi Mumbai and Thane will be separated from the existing Mumbai RoC.

Even as nine districts have been transferred to the new RoC at Pune, Nashik is already clamouring to be re-transferred, back to the RoC at Mumbai. DCA secretary TS Krishnamurthy admitted that the complaints would be examined and the demand could be met. Indications are that Nashik district could be transferred to the RoC which will be located at Navi Mumbai.

A major computerisation programme has been undertaken by the DCA which will ensure that allRoCs are inter-connected by 1999-2000 at a cost of Rs 21 crore. The Pune office is the first fully-computerised RoC, and, according to a government notification, is expected to be commissioned from May 1, 1998. The cost of computerisation will exceed the Rs 24 lakh spent till date. Union law minister M Thampi Durai, was unable to inaugurate the registrar of companies due to the election code of conduct being in force in view of the by-elections to the state legislature.