Parliament Question: Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Mechanism

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF CORPORATE AFFAIRS LOK SABHA STARRED QUESTION NO. 119 ANSWERED ON MONDAY, JULY 27, 2026 Shravana 5, 1948 (Saka) Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Mechanism QUESTION *119. Thiru Dayanidhi Maran: Will the Minister of CORPORATE AFFAIRS be pleased to state: (a) whether the Government has assessed the impact of the fire at the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) data centre on statutory filings, company incorporations and regulatory compliance, including the number of services disrupted and stakeholders affected, if so, the details thereof; (b) the reasons as to why the disaster recovery and business continuity mechanisms failed to ensure uninterrupted access to critical corporate services despite the availability of a disaster recovery site in Chennai; (c) whether companies, start-ups and professionals have suffered delays in statutory compliance due to prolonged portal outages, if so, the details thereof including the steps taken by the Government to ensure that they are not penalised for the same; (d) the details of the inquiry conducted into the fire incident, including the cause of the fire, the extent of data or infrastructure affected and measures taken to strengthen cybersecurity, redundancy and disaster resilience; and (e) whether the Government proposes to modernise the MCA digital infrastructure with high availability architecture and geographically distributed backup systems to prevent recurrence of such disruptions and if so, the details thereof? ANSWER MINISTER OF FINANCE AND CORPORATE AFFAIRS [SMT. NIRMALA SITHARAMAN] (a) to (e): A Statement is laid on the Table of the House. *******STATEMENT REFERRED TO IN ANSWER TO PART (a) (b) (c) (d) and (e) OF LOK SABHA STARRED QUESTION NO. *119 ASKED BY Hon'ble MP THIRU DAYANIDHI MARAN FOR 27TH JULY 2026 REGARDING ‘DISASTER RECOVERY AND BUSINESS CONTINUITY MECHANISM’. (a) Yes. After the fire incident on 5th June 2026 at the primary Data Centre facility, New Delhi, the Disaster Recovery Plan was invoked immediately and the core MCA21 services were activated from the Disaster Recovery Centre at Chennai within the stipulated Recovery time. Certain ancillary environments and services relating to Back Office operations required additional synchronisation, validation and recovery activities before being fully restored. However, these services were not part of the core Front Office MCA21 services and did not result in discontinuation of the core statutory filing and incorporation services. (b) The Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity mechanisms did not fail. The mechanisms were invoked immediately after the incident and core MCA21 services were activated from the Disaster Recovery Centre within the contractual Recovery time. (c) No prolonged outage of the core MCA21 portal services was reported after invocation of the Disaster Recovery mechanism. Nevertheless, considering the capacity enhancement and restoration activities undertaken at the Disaster Recovery Centre after the incident, the Ministry also introduced a series of stakeholder relief measures to ensure that users did not face any adverse consequences on account of the incident. These measures included waiver of additional fees for certain statutory filings, extension of the validity of approved name reservations, extension of timelines for resubmission of e-forms, etc. (d) Preliminary technical and inventory assessment indicates that fire incident originated in or around the battery room area/adjacent utility area of the Data Centre which houses infrastructure of other agencies also. The preliminary assessment indicates that compute, storage, network, security and other supporting infrastructure at the Primary Data Centre was affected by fire, soot, moisture and associated environmental exposure. No loss of application data has been observed. The incident was infrastructural in nature, and no cybersecurity breach or compromise of application data has been reported in connection with the fire. (e) In view of the reply to part (b) and (c) above, necessity for such measures are not felt at present. ******