Bangladesh Form-I: Declaration on Registration of Company (Registrar of Joint Stock Companies and Firms)

This file is the source-review record for this document version, per the manual-source-review-v1 practice.

Current claim

• status: draft
• verification.method: manual-source-review-v1
• verification.lastVerifiedAt: 2026-07-13
• maturity.level: structural-reference

This is GovSchema Standard Research cycle GOV-2687 (parent research cycle GOV-2685). It opens Bangladesh's Business Formation vertical (5 of 6), using the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies and Firms' (RJSC) "Form-I: Declaration on Registration of Company", prescribed under section 25 of the Companies Act, 1994. Bangladesh previously had four published verticals (Taxes — bd/nbr/individual-income-tax-return-form-it-11ga; DMV — bd/brta/motor-vehicle-registration-application; Passport — bd/dip/e-passport-application-form; Visa — bd/dip/machine-readable-visa-application-form). Only National ID remains open backlog after this schema (tracked separately, per the task briefing, in a sibling issue).

Reverses a prior "third-party mirror only" finding

This registry's own CATALOG.md previously recorded, from an earlier cycle's screening, that Bangladesh's Business Formation vertical (RJSC's numbered incorporation forms) was "only mirrored on a third-party legal-services site, not RJSC's own domain" — left as open backlog rather than pursued. This cycle (per the parent GOV-2685 research cycle's re-scouting) found RJSC's own forms portal (roc.gov.bd) has since been rebuilt on the same Oracle Cloud object-storage distribution pattern already documented elsewhere in this registry for Bangladesh's BRTA/DIP forms, and now hosts Form-I (and companion forms) first-party. This is the same class of reversal already recorded for Bangladesh's DMV and Passport verticals (GOV-2644's BRTA finding; GOV-2666's DIP finding).

Source verification (independently re-derived, not copied from the task briefing)

• Forms-index landing page: https://roc.gov.bd/pages/forms/6922d9b8933eb65569dffa1c — independently re-fetched this cycle via curl -sk -A "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/124.0 Safari/537.36": HTTP 200, Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8, 110,032 bytes. Directly grepped the returned HTML for the target PDF's own object-storage filename and found it embedded in a <div class="chip" ... title='ফরম-I'> element ("Form-I" in Bengali) linking to exactly the PDF URL below, alongside a sibling chip for "ফরম-III" — independent confirmation this specific PDF is RJSC's own published "Form-I", not a coincidental same-named file.
• PDF source: https://objectstorage.ap-dcc-gazipur-1.oraclecloud15.com/n/axvjbnqprylg/b/V2Ministry/o/office-roc/2024/12/7010afce4927436495e26e4e85703678.pdf — fetched independently this cycle via the same curl invocation:
  • HTTP 200, Content-Type: application/pdf, 83,237 bytes — independently matches the task briefing's own cited byte count exactly.
  • sha256: de10f506139c9c38984a7f68843eef151647c072e86b2d54b0cbbf8d6deceff7 (computed via sha256sum on the freshly-downloaded file; the task briefing did not itself cite a hash, so this is a first capture, not a cross-check, and anchors a future re-verification diff).
  • The response's own last-modified header reads Mon, 05 Jan 2026 16:51:06 GMT, captured here to anchor a future re-verification diff.
• Legacy cross-reference mirror: the task briefing's cited app.roc.gov.bd/Guidlines/Download/... path was attempted this cycle (https://app.roc.gov.bd/Guidlines/Download/AttachFormFolder/FormsAndFees/Form-I.pdf → HTTP 404; https://app.roc.gov.bd/Guidlines/ → HTTP 403) but the exact live path was not located this cycle. Per the task briefing's own characterization, this mirror is a secondary cross-check only, not the primary source, so this schema's derivation does not depend on it; the primary roc.gov.bd source and its own visual page render (below) were sufficient for independent verification.

PDF structure, independently confirmed via pdfjs-dist@3 (legacy build) + node-canvas

• 1 page, a plain print-and-fill specimen: getFieldObjects() returned null and page.getAnnotations() returned an empty array — zero AcroForm widgets — confirmed, not assumed from the task briefing's own characterization.
• getTextContent() returned a full, clean, English-only text layer. Every text item's (x, y) transform was grouped by rounded y-coordinate and sorted by x to reconstruct the source's own line breaks and blank-line positions.
• Independently cross-checked by rendering the page to a PNG (via pdfjs-dist + node-canvas at 3x scale) and visually inspecting every blank's position and length against the reconstructed text — both methods agree exactly, including the location of every underline/blank relative to its surrounding printed text, and the verbatim double "and and" text immediately after the officer-branch company-name blank (see "Field derivation" below) — ruling out a text-extraction artifact.

Field derivation

The form's full text, reconstructed by line (English-only, verified via getTextContent() positions and the rendered-page cross-check):

``` Form-I Declaration on Registration of Company THE COMPANIES ACT, 1994 (See Section 25)

Name of the Company ________________________________________________________

Declaration of compliance with the requirements of the companies act, 1994 made pursuant to section 25 (2) on behalf of a company proposed to be Registered as the ___________________________________________________________________________

Presented for filing by _____________________________________________________ I, _______________________________of _________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ do solemnly and sincerely declare that I am an Advocate* / Attorney/ A Pleader entitled to appear before High Court who is engaged in the formation of the company/ a person named in the Articles as a Director/ Manager/ Secretary of the ____________________________________________and and that all the requirements of the Companies Act, 1994 in respect of matters precedent to the registration of the said company and incidental there to have been complied with, save only the payment to the fees and sums payable on registration and I make the solemn declaration conscientiously believing the same to be true.

Signature

Note: The declaration need not to be- (a) Signed before a magistrate or an officer competent to administer others or (b) Stamps as a affidavit

________________________________________________________________________________

* Strike out the portion which does not apply ```

Every blank line was mapped to a field or (for the closing declaratory paragraph and signature) a documents[] attestation entry:

• companyName — the header caption's own blank ("Name of the Company ___").
• proposedRegisteredName — a second, separate full-width blank in the body's own opening sentence ("...proposed to be Registered as the ___"). Disclosed judgment call: this is likely completed with the same or a closely related legal name as companyName in ordinary practice (the source gives no further disambiguating instruction), but since the form prints two independent blanks, both are modeled as separate fields rather than one being silently dropped as redundant.
• presentedForFilingBy — "Presented for filing by ___".
• declarantName — "I, ___".
• declarantAddress — "of ___" continuing onto the following full blank line. The blank genuinely spans two printed lines (confirmed via both the text layer's line-grouping and the rendered-page image), modeled as one free-text field rather than two, since the source provides no internal structure (e.g. a separate district/line-1/line-2 breakdown) within it.
• declarantCapacity — the declaration's central strike-out construction, footnoted "* Strike out the portion which does not apply": the declarant is either an Advocate, Attorney, or Pleader "entitled to appear before High Court who is engaged in the formation of the company", or "a person named in the Articles as a Director/ Manager/ Secretary" of the company being formed. Modeled as a single 6-value enum (ADVOCATE/ATTORNEY/PLEADER/DIRECTOR/MANAGER/SECRETARY) — the mutually-exclusive set of printed titles a filer strikes down to one of — consistent with this registry's own established precedent for slash-separated printed choice lists (e.g. bd/dip/e-passport-application- form's passportType/gender fields).
• declarantCompanyName — the officer branch's own trailing blank ("...Director/ Manager/ Secretary of the ___"). requiredWhen declarantCapacity is one of DIRECTOR/MANAGER/SECRETARY: a filer selecting the Advocate/Attorney/Pleader branch instead strikes out this entire clause, blank included, so the blank is only meaningfully completed under the officer branch. Verbatim source artifact, independently confirmed twice (text layer and rendered page image): this blank is immediately followed by the word "and" twice in succession ("___ and and that all the requirements") — disclosed here as printed in the source PDF itself, not a GovSchema transcription error.
• Closing declaratory paragraph + signature line — modeled as a single attestation-category documents[] entry (declarationAttestation, required: true), consistent with this registry's own bd/dip precedent for a form's own declaratory statement text, rather than as data fields.
• Not modeled: the form prints no date blank anywhere (unlike bd/dip/e-passport-application-form's dedicated declaration-date widget), so no date field is invented. The closing "Note" (the declaration need not be signed before a magistrate, nor stamped as an affidavit) is procedural boilerplate, not a fillable field, and the footnote itself ("* Strike out the portion which does not apply") is disclosed above as the instruction governing declarantCapacity, not modeled as its own field.

Scoping decision

In scope (6 fields[] + 1 documents[] entry)

This is a genuinely short, single-page statutory declaration — every printed blank on the form is modeled; there is no narrower sub-pathway to scope out.

Out of scope, disclosed

• Companion forms available the same way on RJSC's rebuilt portal — Form IX (Consent of Director) and Form XII (Particulars of Directors), per the task briefing — are distinct forms serving distinct purposes in the incorporation packet, not sections of this form; left as candidate future companion schemas, consistent with this registry's own companion-schema precedent (e.g. the CH-ZH Hilfsblatt series, the GR AADE Ε1/Ε2/Ε3 forms).
• The legacy app.roc.gov.bd/Guidlines/... mirror — not resolved to a working path this cycle (see "Source verification" above); not needed, since the primary roc.gov.bd source was independently verified in full.

Language

process.language is en: the form's full text layer, independently confirmed via getTextContent(), is entirely in English with no Bengali anywhere on the page — unlike bd/dip's bilingual passport/visa forms, this form (and the forms-index page's own Bengali chip label aside) is an English-only specimen, consistent with bd/nbr and bd/brta.

Conformance run

Two hand-authored valid fixtures under conformance/bd/roc/declaration-on-registration-of-company-form-i/1.0.0/:

• valid-advocate-declarant.json — an Advocate-capacity declarant; declarantCompanyName is correctly left absent (not required under this branch).
• valid-director-declarant.json — a Director-capacity declarant, exercising the declarantCompanyName requiredWhen gate (present and populated).

Both were checked with a from-scratch Node conformance checker (check_conformance.mjs, not committed — a disposable script, per this registry's own established practice) implementing this schema's own required/requiredWhen/type/validation.enum grammar directly against spec/v0.3/SPEC.md's rules:

`` $ node check_conformance.mjs schema.json \ valid-advocate-declarant.json \ valid-director-declarant.json valid-advocate-declarant.json: 0 error(s) valid-director-declarant.json: 0 error(s) ``

Three mutation-control fixtures, each isolated to raise exactly one error:

• mutation-control-missing-company-name.json — drops companyName (a static required: true field) from the advocate-declarant valid fixture.
• mutation-control-invalid-enum-declarant-capacity.json — sets declarantCapacity to "LAWYER", not one of the enum's 6 values.
• mutation-control-missing-conditional-declarant-company-name.json — starts from the director-declarant valid fixture and drops only declarantCompanyName, isolating the requiredWhen violation (since declarantCapacity is still "DIRECTOR").

`` $ node check_conformance.mjs schema.json \ mutation-control-missing-company-name.json \ mutation-control-invalid-enum-declarant-capacity.json \ mutation-control-missing-conditional-declarant-company-name.json mutation-control-missing-company-name.json: 1 error(s) - companyName: required but missing mutation-control-invalid-enum-declarant-capacity.json: 1 error(s) - declarantCapacity: value "LAWYER" not in enum ["ADVOCATE","ATTORNEY","PLEADER","DIRECTOR","MANAGER","SECRETARY"] mutation-control-missing-conditional-declarant-company-name.json: 1 error(s) - declarantCompanyName: required but missing ``

All three negative controls raised exactly one error each, and neither valid scenario raised an unexpected error.

Both registry validators were run against the schema document and pass:

``` $ node tools/validate.mjs registry/bd/roc/declaration-on-registration-of-company-form-i/1.0.0/schema.json ok registry/bd/roc/declaration-on-registration-of-company-form-i/1.0.0/schema.json 1/1 document(s) passed.

$ node tools/validate-ajv.mjs registry/bd/roc/declaration-on-registration-of-company-form-i/1.0.0/schema.json ok registry/bd/roc/declaration-on-registration-of-company-form-i/1.0.0/schema.json [v0.3] 1/1 document(s) validated against the meta-schema (ajv 2020-12). ```

(tools/node_modules did not have ajv/ajv-formats present in this worktree at the start of this cycle; ran npm ci --include=dev inside tools/ first, per this registry's own known NODE_ENV=production gotcha.)

tools/govschema-client/registry-index.json was regenerated via npm run build-index inside tools/govschema-client/.

Scope and jurisdiction notes

• Opens Bangladesh's Business Formation vertical (5 of 6); Taxes, DMV, Passport, and Visa are already published. Only National ID remains open backlog after this schema, tracked separately per the task briefing.
• jurisdiction.level is national — RJSC is Bangladesh's national company-registration authority.
• process.type is registration, matching the form's own title ("Declaration on Registration of Company") and statutory basis (Companies Act, 1994, section 25).
• Companion candidates for a future cycle: RJSC's Form IX (Consent of Director) and Form XII (Particulars of Directors), both disclosed above as reachable the same way on RJSC's rebuilt portal.

Re-verification

Per the practice's cadence, nextReviewBy is set to 2027-01-13 (6 months). A future review should prioritize: (1) confirming the object-storage-hosted PDF has not been silently replaced with a revised edition (this cycle captured its last-modified: Mon, 05 Jan 2026 16:51:06 GMT header to anchor a future diff); (2) re-attempting to locate a working path on the legacy app.roc.gov.bd/Guidlines/... mirror for a fuller cross-check; (3) whether a future cycle wants to author Form IX/Form XII as companion schemas alongside this one.