Maintenace of Statutory register in electronic form

[Achyutha Guptha]

Dear Members,

As per Rule 27 of The Companies (Management and Administration) Rules, 2014, "Every listed company or a company having not less than one thousand shareholders, debenture holders and other security holders, 1[may] maintain its records, as required to be maintained under the Act or rules made there under, in electronic form", does that mean Small companies with less than one thousand shareholders are not allowed to maintain its records in electronic form.

If not, is there any way to maintain these records as per Rule 27(2)? We can maintain the register in Word format, but the records are not updatable. Once we edit a signed Word document, the date and signature clear themselves. If we update records, the new date and signature apply to all the entries in the document, which defeats the purpose of the rule 27(2).

Thanks in advance