---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Saswata Banerjee
I attended a lecture at Indian Merchants Chambers yesterday on the new
government rule called MCA-21. The new rule provides that all document
sumbitted to the Ministry of Company Affaires now needs to be given in
digital form only. They will no longer accept physical documents.
Further, each of these documents will have to have a digital signature
of the persons who were earlier required to sign the physical
documents.
This is the first step to moving all governement documents to digital
form and save huge time and cost of users now wasted in standing in
line and submitting documents to the government. The next will be Tax
authorities, followed by Excise and Customs. Land Records are expected
to be next thereafter.
There are 7 companies in India who are authorised to issue digital
certificates recorgnised under the Information Technology Act. TCS is
one who was present at the seminar and demonstrated the use of the
digital certificates. For those who have not used them, these are
stored by TCS on USB Tokens, which look like USB Pen drives but are
read-only 32KB drives with processors built in. You are supposed to
insert in the token in the UCB port and then ask the Online-Form to
pick up the digital certificate from the token and add it to the
document to submit to the government.
These certificates are based on 128 bit encryption and PKI.
TCS assured me that it is designed to work both on Linux and Mac in
addition to Windows and that they are including the relevant drivers
with the token. However, the additional software tools they are
providing for automating digital signatures on other documents will
work only on Windows. I would like to know if any of you have used the
Digital Siganture / Digital Certificates that is being issued under
MCA-21 and can confirm that it works properly on Linux.
The other providers of Digital Certificates includes MTNL. While TCS
is charging Rs. 2075 for a 1 year valid certificate, MTNL is charging
Rs. 350. They are sending it to you on email !! Ofcourse, they are
doing this only at Malabar Hill Exchange and you have to go personally
to their office and they will verify that you are the person whose
name is on the form and your address, photo, etc.
I do not know much on Digital Certificates. However with this becoming
a major part of commercial and business transactions, I hope what the
government is doing does not work only on Windows. If necessary, we
(or perhaps FSF) will need to initiate a dialog with the government.
In the next year, it is estimated that just government requirment will
result in over 1 million digital certificates being issued. I think
the actual figure will be close to 5 million as more government
depatments like Income Tax, Sales Tax, Excise and Customs departments
move to "digital documents only" mode. (Just imagine - if every shop
keeper needs to file his sales tax returns online and needs a digital
certificate to be able to upload the return to the government). It
would be very important for us to ensure that Linux gets supported in
the process.
Regards
Saswata
