Leave a dormant company on the register and the machinery moves without you. Section 248(1) lets the Registrar begin the removal on its own motion. It bites once a company has not commenced business within a year of incorporation, or has carried on no business for two financial years running. The notice goes to a registered office nobody checks any more, and the annual filing default keeps growing behind it. A director who carries three financial years of missed filings also picks up a disqualification under section 164(2). Voluntary closure runs the other way round. An STK-2 filed with ROC Pune, from ₹9,999, keeps the timing, the accounts and the record in your own hands.
Does a strike off actually fit your company, and from which year?
Two questions decide it and both look backwards. Has the company genuinely stopped, and can it stop cleanly?
The route under section 248(2) is open where a company never commenced business within a year of incorporation, or has carried on no business for the two immediately preceding financial years. It is not open while liabilities are live. Unpaid statutory dues, a director loan still in the balance sheet, an account holding a balance, an unsatisfied charge or a pending proceeding will each stop the application. A form filed over any of them is a rejection waiting to happen. Some classes are shut out of the route altogether, a section 8 company among them.
The financial year matters more than founders expect. Overdue AOC-4 and MGT-7 filings have to be brought up to the end of the year in which the company ceased trading. The date you give for that stoppage therefore sets the size of the clean up. We fix that date from the last bank statement and the last invoice raised. Strike off and winding up are different exits, and the national company closure guide sets out where each one fits.
What do we need from you before anything is filed?
All of it is paperwork you already own or can get in a day. Collecting it in one go keeps the closure inside its window.
- The last balance sheet filed, the current bank statement, and the closure letter once the account is shut
- Digital signatures that have not expired and active DINs, because a deactivated DIN cannot sign the form
- A member list with paid up holdings, since consent comes from three quarters of the paid up capital
- PAN, TAN, the GSTIN if the company ever took one, and the PTEC and PTRC certificates in the company name
- The Shops Act certificate with its Labour Identification Number, if the company registered as an establishment
For a family manufacturing business in Pimpri closing two older companies, that last line usually goes missing. The Gumasta was taken years ago by somebody who has since left, and the closure of an establishment still has to be intimated to the Facilitator within thirty days.
What is due before the STK-2 goes in, and by when?
Three clocks run at once, and only one belongs to the Registrar.
The company law clock comes first. Pending AOC-4 and MGT-7 up to the year of cessation are filed before the application. The statement of accounts that travels with the form is made up to a date not older than thirty days from filing.
The Maharashtra clock keeps charging quietly. Cancelling the enrolment is the only thing that stops profession tax. For a company the demand is ₹2,500 for the year, fixed by the Schedule I entry that catches it, and that amount falls due on 31 March. Shut the doors in June, cancel nothing, and the following March still bills you.
The state registration clock closes last. GST cancellation and the final return that follows it, the Shops Act closure intimation inside thirty days, and the exits on whatever PF and ESI numbers the payroll left behind.
What does a missed year actually cost while the company waits?
| What is still open | What follows from it | What it takes to clear |
|---|---|---|
| Annual filings skipped for the dormant years | An additional fee runs on every pending AOC-4 and MGT-7 until it is filed | The overdue forms go in first, the STK-2 after them |
| A director's DIR-3 KYC never filed | The DIN is deactivated and that director cannot sign the application | KYC with its late fee, after which the signature works again |
| Three financial years with nothing filed | Section 164(2) disqualification follows the director to every other board | Clear the default, then close the company on your own terms |
| No application at all | The Registrar can act on its own motion and remove the name | A removal you did not time, decided on the file ROC Pune already holds |
Each of these is cheap to fix in the month it arises and expensive three years later.
How the filing runs from board resolution to SRN
- We pull the MCA master data and the last filed financials, fix the date trading stopped, and say whether the route is open.
- The board passes its resolution, the directors sign the affidavit and indemnity bond, and members holding three quarters of the paid up capital consent.
- Our CA prepares the statement of accounts inside the thirty day window, and we collect the bank closure letter against it.
- Overdue annual filings go up first, then STK-2 is filed on the MCA V3 portal on the directors' signatures and an SRN is generated.
- We watch the SRN, answer what ROC Pune raises, and hand you the order once the name is off the register.
Nothing in that sequence needs you at a counter. The one offline step is getting the affidavit and the indemnity bond notarised.
Which Pune companies end up on this route?
- A family manufacturing business in Pimpri consolidating into one operating company, with two dormant companies left from an earlier split
- An independent practice in Kothrud, a CA or an architect, that incorporated a company for a project that never started and now wants the DIN clean
- A holding company whose only asset was a Kharadi office lease, wound down once the lease ended and the team moved to the operating entity
The pattern repeats: nobody wanted a second entity, everybody kept paying for one. A Hinjawadi services company that ran two entities for a contract now finished is the same file with different nouns.
Where does the STK-2 land, and who looks at it afterwards?
The registered office address decides everything. A company whose registered office is in Pune district files with ROC Pune. MCA's own registrar page carries Pune under a heading of its own, with a named Registrar and its own contact details, and the reorganisation of 16 February 2026 left it untouched.
What you will read elsewhere is a district list for ROC Pune. No notification carries one. The October 2025 instrument that reorganised the registrars sets up ten, names none of them Pune and stops there. Any district table you find is somebody's arithmetic, so we confirm the registrar for your address before filing.
After the order, an appeal or a restoration stops being a Registrar matter. No tribunal bench sits at Pune, so the petition travels to the NCLT Mumbai Bench. Its published jurisdiction names two states and stops there, Maharashtra and Goa. Company law applications that need Regional Director confirmation sit with Western Region Directorate II at Navi Mumbai.
The state side outlives the closure order. PTEC and PTRC are two different certificates issued under two sub sections of section 5, and each has to be closed on its own. A dedicated Profession Tax Office exists at just six locations across the state, and Pune holds one of them. Cancellation, notices and hearings therefore sit here, while the filing itself runs on mahagst.gov.in. GST cancellation goes to the officer who holds your file. State jurisdiction across the six Pune nodal divisions is allotted by pincode, so the division that registered you is the division that closes you.
Why is a strike off mostly checking rather than typing?
We have run this filing for founders from Hinjawadi to Camp, and most of the work is checking rather than typing. A CA and a CS handle the eligibility read, the statement of accounts and the form itself, and we tell you when a company is not yet closable instead of filing and hoping. 15,000+ clients sit behind that judgement, with 10+ years of practice. Our Pune office is at Yashwant Nagar, Near Bharatiya Samajseva, Yerwada, Pune 411006, and +91 96356 85435 reaches us for a callback within 30 minutes. Jurisdiction follows your own registered address, never ours.