More than 68,000 companies have been registered in eight months following the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, Union Minister P P Chaudhary said. 

GST --the biggest tax reform-- was rolled out from July 1, 2017. 

"The total number of companies registered during the period from July 2017 to February 2018 (post GST) is 68,299," the minister of state for corporate affairs said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha. 

In comparison, the number of such entities was 63,106 between July 2016 and February 2017. Thus increasing trend in the number of companies' registrations has been maintained post GST, the minister added. 

In a separate reply, Chaudhary said that over 17 lakh companies had been registered in India till last year, out of which only 7,270 entities were active. 

"There were only 7,270 active listed companies out of 17.21 lakh registered companies as on December 2017 whereas in December 2014 there were 7,261 active listed companies out of 14.39 lakh registered companies in India," he added. 

Besides, the ministry has filed prosecution against 780 listed companies due to non-filing of financial statements and annual returns. 

He further said that the names of over 2.26 lakh companies have been struck off from Registrar of Companies for failing to comply with regulatory requirements as on December 2017, with Maharashtra accounting for most of these firms. 

ROCs identified 2.97 lakh companies during 2017-18 which were not filing their financial statements or annual returns for a continuous period of two or more fiscals and, prima facie, were not conducting any business in operation 

Out of the total deregistered firms, as many as 59,849 companies are from Maharashtra, followed by Delhi (43,925), Tamil Nadu (24,723), Karnataka (18,165), Telangana (16,817) and Gujarat (11,389). 

The minister, in a separate reply, said that as many as 48,886 prosecutions against the firms for violation of Companies Act, were pending as on January 2017 with the various courts. These have been filed by ROCs. 

In 2016-17 (till November 2017), 4,775 fresh prosecution cases were filed. Thus, out of total 51,661 cases, a total of 4,703 prosecutions were disposed of and 46,958 prosecutions were pending. #casansaar (Source - PTI, Economic Times)