Digital Signature Certification Under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs India

 What Are Certified Digital Signatures?

As time and technology, advance businesses experience a paradigm shift, and this applies to legal instruments as well. Digital Signature is one such legal process that validates electronic documents or legal instruments using the cryptographical technique.

 The signing process has come a long way from thumb imprints to signing using the pen to electronic signatures. But what seems to have broken the barrier are the digital signatures that are certified by a licensed authority.  

These certified digital signatures or DSC are used to authenticate the identity of the sender who uses electronic messaging systems. Electronic documents if manipulated in this way can easily be detected. The cryptographical process involved encrypting the document that can only be deciphered by a public key mechanism.

The DSC Process

The sender encrypts the documents before sending them to the receiver to prevent them from being hacked midway. The document is sent along with the certificate and the public key to ensure authenticity. The encryption is carried out using hash algorithms that generate the key pair as well. The private key generated is as the name suggests kept a secret by the sender. The other key known as public as the name suggests is sent to the receiver to facilitate encryption.  

Digital Signature generation is a simple process and is not as cryptic as it seems. The generate as there are many types of algorithms available but SHA 256 is the most used.

Legal Validity

The DSC is issued under the aegis of MCA of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs in India. The scheme is under the purview of the Information Technology Act 2000.  In the case of LLPs or Companies under the MCA21 e-governance Program, all filing being done online have to use digital signatures.

The certificates are used by the certification agencies by CCA or Controller of Certification Agencies. This is valid under the provision of the IT Act 2000. There are a total of 14 Certification Agencies (LA) authorized by the CCA to issue Digital Signature Certificates (DSCs). The details of these Certification Agencies are available on the MCA portal. However to widen the net authorized partners are appointed by the LA who can issue the certificates. These agencies or partners act through the authorized CAs they represent.   

The Certifying License issuers authorized by CCA are:

• NSDL
• NIC
• SafeScrypt    
• Code Solution CA
• E-Mudhra
• CDAC
• IDRBT
• SIGNX CA
• Capricorn
• Pantasign
• Idsign
• Xtra Trust
• Verasys
• ProdigisignCA

These CAs are granted a license to issue DSC under the information technology Act 2000. The section applicable is section 24 under the IT Act. The site: is https://www.mca.gov.in/MinistryV2/certifyingauthorities.html

Class II and III are specified DSC for efilling under MCA21. The class II and class 3 certifications can also work for other related applications and fresh ones are not required. The certifications are issued for a period of one or two years and the cost includes the UBS Token.

One can apply for DSC online or through an agency in Kolkata and Mumbai. The necessary documentation is sent by email and then further verified by a video interview. The DSC certification is received within 5 days at the given address. The use of digital signatures is increasing pan India as more and more communications, e-tendering and online transactions seek authentication of electronic documents.