A founder forwards us a WhatsApp screenshot from a peer group: "Good news — MCA extended DPT-3 to 31 July, we have a full extra month." She has just finished her Series A, her company took a ₹40 lakh loan from a director last October, and she has decided the filing can wait until the last week of July. She is about to make two expensive mistakes at once. First, she thinks she has an extension. She does not — she has a fee waiver, which is a different thing with a different legal effect. Second, she assumes DPT-3 does not apply to her because she "hasn't taken any deposits." That is exactly the misreading that lands private companies with penalties for a form they thought they could skip.

With the extended window closing on 31 July 2026, here is what General Circular No. 02/2026 actually says, what Form DPT-3 actually captures, and what happens on 1 August to companies that get this wrong.

What the law actually requires

Form DPT-3 is the annual return of deposits mandated by Rule 16 of the Companies (Acceptance of Deposits) Rules, 2014, framed under Sections 73 to 76 of the Companies Act, 2013. Every company other than a government company must file it — and this is the part founders miss — whether or not it has accepted deposits. The form covers two distinct things:

Deposits accepted and outstanding as on 31 March, and
"Exempted deposits" — amounts received that are not treated as deposits but must still be reported. This bucket is defined in Rule 2(1)(c) of the Deposit Rules and includes loans from directors, inter-corporate loans, share application money pending allotment, advances from customers, and money raised through debentures.

So the founder above who took a ₹40 lakh director loan has an exempted deposit. She is squarely within the filing obligation via the "particulars of transactions not considered as deposits" return (the annual reporting under Rule 16A read with Rule 16). "We did not accept deposits" is not an exemption from DPT-3 — it usually just means you file it as a nil-deposit / exempted-deposit return rather than a deposit return.

The statutory due date is fixed by Rule 16: on or before 30 June every year, reporting the position as on 31 March of that year. For FY 2025–26, that statutory date was 30 June 2026.

What Circular 02/2026 changed — and what it did not

Following the fire at the MCA Data Centre on 5 June 2026, which forced an unscheduled switchover to the Disaster Recovery site and left several MCA21 V3 services intermittently unavailable during the peak filing window, the Ministry issued General Circular No. 02/2026 dated 19 June 2026.

Read the circular precisely. It does not move the statutory due date of 30 June 2026. What it does is waive the additional fee under Section 403 of the Companies Act, 2013 that would otherwise accrue on a late DPT-3, provided the form is filed on or before 31 July 2026. In plain terms: you are already technically "late" against the 30 June statutory date, but if you file by 31 July you pay only the normal filing fee — no multiplier, no penalty. Miss 31 July and the clock that was paused snaps back on.

This distinction matters because it changes the penalty maths the moment the calendar turns to August.

Practical implications — what actually happens if you miss it

The cost of missing 31 July 2026 is not a single flat fine. It stacks:

1. Additional fee under Section 403 (Rule 12, Registration Offices and Fees Rules). Once the waiver lapses, the additional fee is levied on a sliding scale that climbs with delay, reaching up to 12 times the normal filing fee for prolonged default. For a company with authorised capital in the common ₹1–5 lakh band, the normal DPT-3 fee is ₹300–₹400; a 12x multiplier turns a ₹400 obligation into roughly ₹4,800 in fee alone — trivial in isolation, but it is only the first layer.

2. Penalty under Rule 21 of the Deposit Rules. For contravention of the deposit rules where no specific penalty is provided, the company and every officer in default is liable to a fine up to ₹5,000, and where the contravention is continuing, a further fine up to ₹500 for every day the default continues. This is the layer founders never budget for, because it runs against each officer in default, not just the company.

3. Section 73/76A exposure for genuine deposit defaults. If the amounts were actually deposits accepted in violation of Section 73 (not merely exempted deposits reported late), the exposure escalates sharply — Section 76A prescribes a penalty on the company of not less than ₹1 crore or twice the deposit amount, whichever is lower, and imprisonment and fine for officers. Most startups are nowhere near this, but the reason to file DPT-3 correctly is precisely to document that your director loans and share application money were exempted deposits and not disguised public deposits.

4. MCA21 V3 scrutiny flags. A missing or repeatedly late DPT-3 is one of the data points the MCA21 V3 system uses to flag a company for scrutiny and to build the "non-compliant company" profile that feeds strike-off and director-disqualification workflows. A director already carrying a late AOC-4 or MGT-7A who now adds a defaulted DPT-3 is compounding a risk record, not creating an isolated one.

The point: the ₹4,800 fee is not the threat. The daily-accruing per-officer penalty and the compliance-record flag are.

The DPT-3 waiver sits inside a wider fire-relief package — do not confuse the pieces

The 5 June data-centre fire triggered more than one relaxation, and founders are blurring them together into a vague sense that "MCA has extended everything." It has not. Each relief is a separate circular with its own scope and its own cut-off, and mixing them up is how a company misses a deadline it thought was covered.

Three distinct measures are live right now:

DPT-3 additional-fee waiver — General Circular 02/2026, file by 31 July 2026 to avoid the Section 403 additional fee (the subject of this article).
A 30-day V3 technical-glitch grace period — the MCA e-Governance Cell indicated that late filings up to 30 July 2026 may be accepted without additional fee under Section 403 where the delay is specifically attributable to a documented V3 technical issue during the outage window. Crucially, this is not a blanket extension for every form: you must be able to evidence that the portal, not your own delay, caused the miss. Keep screenshots and error logs.
The Companies Compliance Facilitation Scheme (CCFS), 2026 — a separate one-time settlement window (General Circular 01/2026) that ran on its own timeline and covers a different set of belated filings altogether.

The practical takeaway is that you cannot assume a form other than DPT-3 is automatically covered by "the fire extension." If your AOC-4 or MGT-7A is also pending, check the specific relief that applies to that form and that deadline — do not assume the 31 July DPT-3 date protects it. When two reliefs appear to overlap, file to the earliest applicable date; there is no penalty for filing early and considerable penalty for guessing wrong.

One more operational reality from the outage: the switchover to the Disaster Recovery site left V3 slow and occasionally unresponsive for days. The relief circulars protect you from fees, not from a form that failed to upload. A DPT-3 you attempted to file at 11pm on 31 July that errored out is, legally, an unfiled DPT-3 — the waiver rewards a completed submission, not a good-faith attempt. That is the single strongest argument for filing this week rather than in the final 48 hours.

Step-by-step: what to do before 31 July 2026

Confirm you are in scope. You are, unless you are a government company. Do not self-exempt on the basis of "no deposits."
Pull your 31 March 2026 balance sheet and identify every credit balance that is a loan or advance: director loans, loans from holding/subsidiary/associate companies, share application money pending allotment, customer advances outstanding beyond the permitted period, and any debentures or bonds.
Classify each amount as either a deposit or an exempted deposit under Rule 2(1)(c). Director loans backed by a declaration that the money is not borrowed = exempted deposit. Get that written director declaration on file now if you do not have it — it is your evidence.
Obtain the auditor certificate where the return requires it for the outstanding deposit figures.
File Form DPT-3 on MCA21 V3 using a Class 3 DSC (V3 no longer accepts Class 2). Because the June data-centre incident caused intermittent V3 outages, do not leave this to 30 or 31 July — if the portal is slow again, the waiver does not save a form that never submitted. File in the next few days.
Save the SRN and challan. The paid challan and the "already filed" acknowledgement are what you show if the statutory-date-vs-waiver-date question is ever raised.
If you genuinely cannot file by 31 July, file immediately after regardless, pay the additional fee, and stop the daily Rule 21 clock — every day of continued default adds to the per-officer fine.

FAQ

Q: We are a private limited company that has never taken a public deposit. Do we still file DPT-3?
Yes. DPT-3 is an annual return for all companies except government companies, and it captures exempted deposits — including director loans and inter-corporate loans — not just public deposits. Filing "nil" where truly nil is also done through DPT-3.

Q: Is 31 July 2026 the new due date?
No — and this is the trap. The statutory due date remains 30 June 2026 under Rule 16. Circular 02/2026 only waives the additional fee if you file by 31 July 2026. Legally you are filing late but at zero penalty during that window.

Q: We took a ₹40 lakh loan from a director. Deposit or not?
It is an exempted deposit if the director gives a written declaration that the amount is from her own funds and not borrowed or accepted from others. It must still be reported in DPT-3. Keep the declaration dated on or before the loan.

Q: What exactly does it cost if we file on 3 August?
The Section 403 additional fee revives (up to 12x the normal fee depending on delay), plus a Rule 21 penalty of up to ₹5,000 on the company and each officer in default, plus up to ₹500 per day of continuing default — and the late filing becomes a data point in your MCA21 V3 compliance record.

Closing

The 31 July 2026 window is a fee waiver, not a holiday — and DPT-3 catches far more companies than the ones that think of themselves as "deposit-taking." If you have a director loan, share application money, or an inter-corporate advance sitting on your 31 March balance sheet, you are in scope, and every day past 31 July that the return stays unfiled adds a per-officer penalty and a scrutiny flag.

For a compliance audit of your company, visit pvtltd.co.

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