Guidelines of Institute of Company Secretaries of India (“ICSI”) on signing of documents digitally by Practicing Company Secretaries (“PCS”)

In order to meet the compliance timeliness during the lockdown due to outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, “ICSI” has allowed the PCS to sign/authenticate/attest any return, report, certificate or any other documents using his digital signature certificate provided digital signature shall contain the date and time stamp and in that case, there is no need to affix the stamp or the seal of the PCS. However, UDIN must be mentioned as prescribed by the ICSI. Further, PCS may carry out the secretarial Audit and other assignments by using appropriate information technology to access the relevant documents and records to complete the assignments.

Effective date: May 04, 2020

Source: ICSI Circular dated 04.05.2020