New system for reserving name

MCA has vide its notification dated 20th January, 2018 introduced a new system of name reservation for new companies as well as existing companies. It is called RUN (Reserve Unique Name) and it is available on the webspace as against a form which was hitherto the norm with MCA. So form INC-1 has been done away with.

RUN does not ask for too many details - just entity type, CIN, proposed name & comments. One needs to feed data into it and see how it works before commenting on the efficacy of the system.

Hitherto the form INC-1 used to run into a wall called the Central Reservation Centre or CRC. The CRC was known mostly for rejecting names rather than approving them and they had a funny, vague and ambiguous internal guidelines which they followed ridiculously. That is if the proposed name matched an existing entity's name by 50% it was automatically rejected. It is so silly and in absence of no further details as to how that system worked, it was a pain in the wrong place.

RUN does not require any digital signature to be uploaded, so hope it is not subject to misuse. People could just apply for several unique names and sit on it thereby preventing those names from being available for genuine entrepreneurs. I hope this is not the case. As i have said elsewhere unless and until we go through the new system, we will be unable to comment on its efficacy.

Also not aware if the RUN has some fees to be paid, which i am sure it has, then people could end up paying multiple times for different names because there is no resubmission process in the RUN system.

I hope RUN has some kind of appeal system in place otherwise what will happen is again some stupid internal guidelines will be followed much to the heartburn of genuine entrepreneurs.


In fact the CRC was so idiotic that they used to reject change name applications of existing companies without giving it any thought whatsoever.

Apparently the form INC-32(SPICe) has also been amended alongwith the digital MOA and AOA in forms INC-33 and INC-34 respectively. One has to look into these forms to find out what changes they have made.

Where the no. of subscribers to a new company are more than 7 or where the documents are being executed outside India, then the digital MOA & AOA is not to be used. Instead the duly signed MOA & AOA needs to be attached to the form INC-32.

DIN for a Director in an existing company

MCA has vide its notification dated 26th January, 2018 eased the requirement of a DIN (Director Identification Number) for appointment of a Director in an existing company. They have amended the Companies (Appointment & Qualification of Directors) Rules, 2014 to that extent.

Rule 9(1) has been amended as follows:

" (1) Every applicant, who intends to be appointed as director of an existing company shall make an application electronically in Form DIR-3, to the central Government for allotment of a Director Identification Number (DIN) along with such fees as provided under the companies (Registration offices and Fees) Rules, 2014.

Provided that in case of proposed directors not having approved DIN, the particulars of maximum three directors shall be mentioned in Form No.INC-32 (SPICe) and DIN may be allotted to maximum three proposed directors through Form INC-32 (SPICe)";

What this means is that if a person is proposed to be appointed as a Director of an existing company (as against a company to be incorporated), then he need not mandatorily have a DIN, which was a pre-existing condition. In that case, the company has to file form INC-32 (SPICe) and this form INC-32 (SPICe) can take maximum 3 DIN applications. The additional document to be attached to the form INC-32 (SPICe) is the board resolution approving the appointment of these new directors.

Now this form INC-32(SPICe) is an incorporation form, so why confuse it with the DIN forms, it is not clear at all. Why not enable form DIR-3 itself to take upto 3 applications and allow it to be uploaded that way with the board resolution attached. Perhaps they could have formed a DIR-3 (company) form as against a DIR-3 (individual) form. Confusion worse confounded.

Then again we come to Rule 9(3) which is pertaining to form DIR-3. The main sub rule 9(3)(a) has been left as it is i.e.

"The applicant shall download Form DIR-3 from the portal, fill in the required particulars sought ¹[therein, verify and sign the form] and after attaching copies of the following documents, scan and file the entire set of documents electronically-"

The heading of Rule 9 has been changed to 

"Application for allotment of Director rdentificataon Number before appointment in an existing company,,;"

Earlier it was 

"Application for Allotment of Director Identification Number"

Now under this revised heading of Rule 9, there are two forms prescribed i.e. INC-32 (SPICe) and form DIR-3 without clearly specifying when both of these forms are to be used. 

It is not clear now how many forms are to be used. DIR-3 by the Director, INC 32(SPICe) by the company and thereafter another form DIR-12 for appointment of Directors. 

MCA is clearly losing its way, it is a badly drafted amendment with the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. 

Spies in Slovenia

Today's interesting news comes from Slovenia, where it is reported that the spies have gone on strike. I wonder how spies take revenge for low pay - do they reveal the secrets which they have accumulated over the years, put it out on public domain. Or perhaps spy on their masters, which I suspect they may be doing it anyways.  

The Island

The Island by Victoria Hislop is a novel of rare moral gravity and emotional finesse, a work that marries intimate human suffering to a scrupulously rendered social history. Rooted in Greece yet universal in its reach, the book meditates on love and betrayal, endurance and loss, and the long, corrosive shadows cast by silence. At its centre lies leprosy—once a disease more feared than understood—employed by Hislop not merely as a medical condition but as a potent metaphor for exile, stigma, and society’s instinct to banish what it cannot bear to confront. What might have become a bleak chronicle of suffering is instead transformed into a profoundly humane narrative about dignity, resilience, and the stubborn persistence of hope.

The novel unfolds across two interwoven timelines: the early-to-mid twentieth century and the early years of the new millennium. Its emotional and historical fulcrum is Spinalonga, the small, wind-lashed island off the coast of Crete that served as Greece’s official leper colony from 1903 until 1957. For more than half a century, Spinalonga existed in the national imagination as a place of dread—a terminal destination for those diagnosed with the disease, forcibly excised from society and condemned to live, and often die, in isolation.

This sombre history is framed by a contemporary quest. Alexis Fielding, a young English woman, travels to Crete in search of answers about her mother’s past—a past shrouded in evasions, silences, and an unarticulated grief. The novel opens with Alexis arriving in the village of Plaka, armed only with a letter of introduction from her mother, Sophia. Raised on fragments and omissions, Alexis has grown up knowing almost nothing of her mother’s childhood or family. Sophia’s resolute refusal to speak of her life in Greece has always suggested not indifference but a carefully guarded wound.

The letter leads Alexis to Fotini, an elderly family friend who becomes the novel’s custodian of memory. Through Fotini’s measured, compassionate narration, the story slips effortlessly into the past. At its heart is Eleni, Alexis’s great-grandmother—a woman of quiet strength living a modest yet fulfilled life in Plaka with her husband and two daughters, Anna and Maria. Their days are shaped by the steady rhythms of village existence: fishing, farming, gossip, ritual, and the consolations of a tightly knit community.

This fragile equilibrium is shattered when Eleni is diagnosed with leprosy. In an era when the disease was synonymous with moral taint as much as physical decay, diagnosis amounts to a social death sentence. With chilling efficiency and little compassion, Eleni is torn from her family and exiled to Spinalonga. Her departure is catastrophic—not only for her, but for those left behind, who must shoulder the burden of shame, fear, and the ever-present terror of contagion.

Yet Hislop refuses to depict Spinalonga as a mere landscape of despair. The suffering is undeniable—disfigurement, inadequate medical care, grinding poverty, and relentless stigma—but within these confines, life persists. The island’s inhabitants build homes, form relationships, establish shops and social structures, and carve out moments of laughter and tenderness. Against expectation, Spinalonga becomes not only a place of punishment but also one of unexpected community.

Eleni emerges as a quiet moral centre on the island, refusing to relinquish her sense of self or humanity. Over time, incremental improvements arrive: better treatments, more enlightened administration, and doctors who reject the logic of abandonment in favour of compassion. Through Eleni’s experience, the novel challenges the assumption that isolation erases identity. On Spinalonga, love and jealousy, ambition and kindness, flourish—sometimes in purer, less compromised forms than in the so-called healthy world beyond.

Back in Plaka, Eleni’s daughters grow up in the long shadow of her absence. Anna, the elder, is consumed by bitterness and fear, haunted by the possibility that she too may be infected. Maria, gentler and more morally grounded, struggles to hold the remnants of the family together. It is Anna’s choices, however, that propel much of the novel’s tragedy. Driven by jealousy, selfishness, and a desperate desire for escape, she enters a disastrous marriage and commits betrayals whose consequences reverberate across generations. Her path stands in stark contrast to Maria’s loyalty and quiet strength, underscoring one of the novel’s central truths: that fear and secrecy corrode the soul, while truth—however painful—offers the only credible route to healing.

As the decades pass, the wider world intrudes. Crete is scarred by war, occupation, and political upheaval. Scientific progress eventually renders leprosy treatable, eroding the moral justification for Spinalonga’s continued existence. When the colony finally closes in 1957, its remaining inhabitants are permitted to return to the mainland. Yet liberation is bittersweet. After years of exclusion, reintegration proves fraught, haunted by lingering prejudice and deep emotional dislocation.

When Fotini’s account draws to a close, Alexis at last comprehends the magnitude of her family’s suffering—and the true reason for her mother’s silence. Sophia’s refusal to revisit the past is revealed not as coldness but as an act of fierce protection: an attempt to bury trauma rather than bequeath it to the next generation.

Ultimately, The Island is about far more than leprosy. It is a meditation on the destructive power of stigma, the resilience of communities under extreme conditions, the moral cost of betrayal and concealment, and the redemptive possibilities of truth and remembrance. Hislop’s prose is lucid and quietly evocative, allowing emotion to accumulate organically rather than erupt in melodrama. Her rendering of Spinalonga is especially striking, transforming a historical footnote into a living, breathing world of fully realised lives.

Deeply moving and ethically resonant, The Island succeeds both as an expansive family saga and as an act of historical reclamation. By giving voice to those once silenced and shunned, Victoria Hislop restores dignity to lives erased by fear and ignorance. The novel lingers long after the final page—not with grand gestures, but with a quiet, insistent reminder that compassion, once denied, is often the most necessary virtue of all.

The Count of Monte Cristo

Finished reading a fascinating book by Alexandre Dumas "The Count of Monte Cristo" a book of love, deception, revenge and murder - tragic characters in the book - an absolute page turner - it is a timeless classic as relevant today as it was when it was written in 1844. It focuses on a man who is wrongfully imprisoned, escapes from jail, acquires a fortune, and then sets about getting revenge against those responsible for his wrongful confinement. Goodreads 5/5

Murder in Mesopotamia

Agatha Christie is on familiar ground when she covers murders in rural England which is her speciality - unfortunately "Murder in Mesopotamia" is a story based in Iraq on an archeological site - a murder takes place and Hercule Poirot is travelling some place nearby - so he comes in and solves the crime in his inimitable style - Christie maintains the suspense till the end in every book of hers - same is true of this one as well. Goodreads 4/5

Echoes in the Darkness

Just finished reading a true crime story by Joseph Wambaugh - "Echoes in the Darkness". This book is regarding the murder mystery of Susan Reinert a divorced school teacher and her two children Karen and Michael who were never found since that fateful day in June 1979. She was having a secret affair with another school teacher William Bradfield who was famous for his numerous flings with women. He was having another secret affair with another teacher Sue Myers and this after having two failed marriages in the past. Whilst he was juggling with the two teachers he started and successfully carried two more affairs both with students of the Upper Merion High School in Main Line, Philadelphia where they were all enrolled. One of the student was a minor when he started his affair, but all his women swore by his affections. The principal of the school was Jay Smith an ex-army officer and quite a character in himself with revelations of sexual escapades and fantasies, shoplifting and his own daughter Stephanie and son-in-law Eddie Hunsberger were never found – it was alleged that Smith had murdered his daughter and son-in-law but they just vanished from the face of earth and were never found to this day. The prosecution had to rely on circumstantial evidence in this case. Much of the book in the first half is devoted to the peccadilloes of William Bradfield and Jay Smith in conjuring up their images as crazy, demented individuals. Goodreads 5/5