Patna, July 25: The Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) today urged the state government to appoint company secretaries in all its corporations for transparency in implementation of labour laws by either public or private companies.

ICSI’s Patna branch had organised a meeting of members and students pursuing company secretary (CS) courses on Bihar Industries Association premises today. N.K. Jain, the ICSI’s secretary and chief executive officer (CEO) and Sutanu Sinha, the director of ICSI also took part in the programme.

“We met labour resources minister Janardan Singh Sigriwal who was receptive to our suggestions and asked for more ideas to bring transparency for enforcement of labour laws by companies,” said Nesar Ahmad, the vice-president of ICSI.

ICSI would also meet deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi.

Citing the provisions of various laws, Ahmad said any company, whether public or private, listed or non-listed, having a capital of Rs 5 crore and more must have the provision to appoint a CS.

Companies having a capital investment of more than Rs 10 lakh and upto Rs 5 crore would have to take the services of a CS for preparing compliance report to check whether companies were following labour norms.

The CS has to verify whether a company has been regularly deducting provident fund, Employees State Insurance Corporation, wage and others, he said.

Ahmad said there is a huge gap between demand and supply of CS in India, and added that there were about 28,000 members and about 2.35 lakh students across the country were preparing for the course. In Bihar, about 4,000 students were preparing for CS course, he added.

“There were around 9 lakh companies in the country registered under Company Act and all these companies require services of CS,” said Ahmad adding that a few years ago, there were about 32,000 to 33,000 companies having capital investment of more than Rs 5 crore and this figure would have increased in the past few years.