Secretarial Standards-1 (SS-1) and Secretarial Standards-2 (SS-2) have been revised by ICSI followed by the approval of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) vide it’s letter No. 1/3/2014-Cl.I dated June 14, 2017.
SS-1 and SS-2 issued were approved by the Central Government under Section 118(10) of the Companies Act, 2013 on April 10, 2015 and were published in the Gazette of India Extraordinary Part III -Section 4 on April 23, 2015 vide ICSI Notification number (1) SS of 2015, making them effective from 1st July, 2015.
The revised SS-1 and SS-2 were released by the Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs, Arun Jaitley.
On the occasion, CS (Dr) Shyam Agrawal, President ICSI, said that, “Benchmarking excellence in every sphere of corporate activities is the need of the day. Secretarial Standards strengthen board processes and general meetings while promoting shareholders’ democracy, along with facilitating better interpretation of law and complements corporate governance.”
The revised SS-1 and SS-2 shall be applicable to all the companies (except the exempted class of companies) with effect from October 1, 2017. And, accordingly all board meetings (including meetings of committees of Board) and general meetings in respect of which notices are issued on or after October 1, 2017 need to comply with the revised SS-1 and SS-2. The existing SS-1 and SS-2 will be applicable to the board meetings and general meetings held on or before September 30, 2017.
Revisions in Secretarial Standards (SS-1 and SS-2) have been Companies (Amendment) Act, 2015 and amendments to the Rules notified by MCA, exemption Notification(s) issued by MCA dated June 5, 2015, relaxations aimed to further ease of doing business, feedback received from members on practical difficulties that emerged during the first time implementation of Secretarial Standards. It will also remove the interpretation issues along with taking suggestions from different stakeholders.