MCA CHG-1 Webform Filing Guide: Complete Instructions for Charge Registration under Companies Act, 2013

Every time a company pledges an asset as security for a loan, that pledge is invisible to the outside world until it's registered with the Registrar of Companies. That registration — filed through the MCA CHG-1 webform — is what turns a private lending arrangement into a fact the market can rely on: a bank checking a company's asset position, or a creditor deciding whether to extend credit, both depend on the charge register being accurate and current. Miss the filing window, and the charge can become unenforceable against the company's liquidator or other creditors, regardless of what the loan documents say.

CHG-1 covers the creation or modification of any charge other than one relating to debentures, and it also absorbs a specific SARFAESI-era scenario: modification of a charge in favour of an Asset Reconstruction Company (ARC) or an assignee, where a distressed loan has been sold on to a specialised recovery entity. The Instruction Kit that MCA has published walks filers through the entire lifecycle — from first login to final acknowledgement — and this guide distils that kit into a practitioner-usable reference, covering every field, deadline, and fee rule it contains.

This is aimed equally at a CS trainee filing their first CHG-1 and a compliance head managing a consortium-financed charge across multiple lenders — the mechanics are the same, but the stakes rise quickly once multiple charge holders, ranks, and percentage extents enter the picture.

What Law Governs the CHG-1 Webform, and Who Needs to File It?

CHG-1 is filed pursuant to Sections 77, 78 and 79 of the Companies Act, 2013 — and, for foreign companies, Section 378 read together with those same three sections — along with Rule 3(1) of the Companies (Registration of Charges) Rules, 2014. Its job is to let a company notify its Registrar of Companies of a charge it has created or modified. Importantly, the obligation doesn't stop at charges the company itself creates: if a company acquires property that already carries a charge, it must also furnish particulars of that pre-existing charge. And a single asset can carry more than one charge simultaneously, provided the existing charge holder consents — which is exactly the scenario the webform's "consortium finance" and "joint charge" fields are built to handle.

Check Points Before You Start Filling the Form

How Do You Access and Submit the CHG-1 Webform?

MCA offers two entry routes into the CHG-1 webform, and both converge on the same submission-to-acknowledgement sequence once the application itself is open.

Once inside the form, company information is entered — auto-populated for company users, searchable by name for professional users, and dropdown-selectable for other business users associated with multiple CINs. From there, both routes follow the same lifecycle:

Resubmission — What Changes if MCA Sends the Form Back

If a filed CHG-1 is marked "Resubmission Required," it can be reopened either through the application history on the user dashboard, or directly via the link in MCA's notification email. Either route leads back into the same form — filer corrects the flagged issues, saves as a draft if needed, and resubmits. The SRN is then updated, the DSC re-affixed, and the revised PDF re-uploaded.

What Information Does CHG-1 Require, Field by Field?

The webform is built around a small number of decision points — is this a creation or a modification, is the applicant the company or the charge holder, are there multiple charge holders — that determine which fields become mandatory. Below is a working breakdown grouped by what each cluster of fields is actually trying to establish.

Company and Charge Identification

Dates and Filing Deadlines

Field 16 (date of creation/last modification prior to the present one) is displayed only for modification filings, and is pre-filled from the charge master associated with the Charge ID in Field 3(b) where available.

Property Description and Multiple Charge Holders

Field 7(a) requires selecting at least one checkbox describing what the charge is on. Field 8(c) — number of charge holders — is where consortium and joint-charge scenarios diverge from single-lender filings:

Once more than one charge holder is entered, the "List of Charge Holders" section appears, along with Download Excel and Import buttons — filers can populate the required number of rows in the downloaded template (.XLS format) and import it back, rather than entering each holder manually.

Amount Secured by the Charge

Acquiring Property That's Already Charged

Field 12 exists for the scenario where a company acquires property that already carries a charge in someone else's favour. Filling in any one of sub-fields 12(a)–(f) makes the rest mandatory as a set — MCA doesn't allow a partial disclosure here.

When Property Isn't Registered in the Company's Name

Field 15(b)(i) — CIN or LLPIN of the entity in whose name the property/interest is actually registered — must be valid and different from the CIN in Field 1. Field 15(b)(iii), the name of that entity or individual, becomes mandatory whenever Field 15(a) confirms the property isn't registered in the filing company's name; if a CIN/LLPIN was entered in 15(b)(i), this name field auto-fills from that master record.

Attachments

• Instrument(s) of creation or modification of charge — mandatory in every filing.
• Instrument(s) evidencing creation/modification for acquired property — mandatory only when Field 12 (acquisition) is filled in.
• Optional attachments — up to five, for any supplementary information that didn't fit within a field.

Declaration and Digital Signatures

The declaration section requires the Board resolution number and date authorising the signatory. Where a CIN is entered, that date must be on or after the company's date of incorporation; where an FCRN is entered, it must be on or after the date the foreign company established its place of business in India. Either way, the date cannot be later than the system date.

PAN of the charge holder is mandatory unless the second declaration checkbox — confirming the holder is a multilateral or international financial institution exempted from Indian income tax under the UN Privileges and Immunities Act — is selected. Where the charge has been modified in favour of an ARC or assignee (Field 6(a) = "Yes"), both the ARC/assignee's name and PAN become mandatory, digitally signed fields.

What Do the Webform Buttons Actually Do?

How Much Does It Cost to File CHG-1?

Normal fees for Indian companies with share capital scale with the company's nominal share capital:

Additional Fees for Delayed Filing

Under the additional-fee logic, the clock starts on the date of creation/modification of the charge, with a 30-day limit for the standard additional fee and a 60-day limit for ad valorem fees to apply, per the Companies (Registration of offices and Fees) Rules, 2014:

"Small Company" is as defined under Section 2(85) of the Companies Act, 2013. Fees remain subject to change under the Act or any rule, regulation, or notification issued under it.

STP vs Non-STP Processing — Why the Signatory Mix Matters

Annexures and Useful Links

Annexure A — PIN Code Master: Referenced via the "All India Pin Code Directory" file on data.gov.in's PIN code catalog.

Annexure B — List of Charge Holders: Supplied as an embedded Excel template ("List of Charge Holders.XLS") for entering multiple charge holder particulars.

• Form access: mca.gov.in → Company Forms Download (E-Filing)
• E-filing FAQs: mca.gov.in → Ministry FAQs
• Payment and fee services: mca.gov.in → Payment Services

Before You File: A Practitioner's Checklist

Frequently Asked Questions

Practitioner's Analysis

The detail most likely to trip up an otherwise careful filer is the interplay between the 30-day and 120-day windows. Most practitioners keep the 120-day outer deadline front of mind because it's tied to escalating fees, but the 30-day restriction on charge-holder-initiated filings is easy to miss — it only bites when the charge holder, rather than the company, is the one filing, which is exactly the scenario that arises when a company is slow or unwilling to register a charge itself and the lender steps in.

The bigger operational risk sits with STP processing. Because a jointly-signed form is taken on record with no resubmission option, every numeric field — rank, percentage extent, amount secured per holder — needs to be right the first time, particularly in consortium or joint-charge filings where these figures must reconcile against Field 10(a)'s total. A single arithmetic mismatch in the percentage-extent column, for instance, isn't something that gets flagged for correction after the fact in STP mode; it goes on record as filed.

For consortium-financed charges specifically, the safer workflow is to build out the charge-holder schedule — ranks, percentages, amounts — in the downloadable Excel template first, reconcile the totals offline against the master amount in Field 10(a), and only then import it into the webform. This sidesteps the temptation to hand-enter multiple rows directly into the form, where errors are harder to catch before submission.

More broadly, the automated guardrails in this kit — SRN cancellation on missed deadlines, tiered reminder emails for resubmission, and the STP/non-STP split based purely on who signs — reflect MCA's steady move toward system-enforced compliance on charge filings rather than officer discretion. Firms that handle a high volume of charge registrations would do well to build these deadlines directly into their internal tracking systems rather than relying on MCA's reminder emails as the primary safeguard.