Chartered Accountant · ICAI M.No. 153926 · FRN 136869W · Reviewed on 13 October 2026
The immediate mechanics of default
No auditor means no audit report; no audit report means the AGM cannot adopt accounts and AOC-4 cannot be filed — the ₹100-per-day meters on AOC-4 and MGT-7 then run independently. If the members fail to appoint an auditor, the Act’s machinery (including the government’s power to fill the vacancy) kicks in — but in practice the default is discovered late, usually by a bank, an investor’s diligence or an MCA notice.
Penalties and the personal cost
Section 147 of the Companies Act 2013 prices the contravention: fines on the company (into lakhs) and on every officer in default. The quieter, costlier consequences: section 164(2) disqualification of directors after three consecutive years of non-filing — which travels to their other boards — DIN deactivation, “ACTIVE non-compliant” tags, and eventually section 248 strike-off with personal liabilities surviving the company.
Fixing a missed year the clean way
The repair sequence is boring and works: appoint the auditor (ADT-1), get the pending years audited oldest-first, hold the overdue AGMs properly documented, file AOC-4/MGT-7 with the accrued fees, and only then consider condonation or compounding where notices have already issued. A genuinely dead company is better closed through STK-2 than left accumulating ₹200 a day. Our audit practice takes up exactly these multi-year clean-ups.