Q.What rights does a Company Secretary enjoy in a company?

Rights and duties go hand in hand here — the Company Secretary's rights largely exist to make the statutory duties actually performable.

The rights of a Company Secretary are best understood not as a random set of employee entitlements but as the necessary counterpart to the duties and personal exposure the office carries — a person cannot fairly be expected to certify compliance and answer personally for its failure without being given the means and standing to actually do the job.

The most straightforward right is to the remuneration, allowances, and other benefits fixed by the Board resolution or contract under which the Company Secretary was appointed. Like any employee's salary, this is an enforceable contractual entitlement, and any change to it during the tenure would ordinarily require the same kind of Board authorisation that fixed it in the first place.

Beyond remuneration, the office carries a set of functional rights tied directly to the Section 205 duties. The Company Secretary has the right of access to the statutory registers, minute books, and other company records necessary to verify and certify compliance — without such access, the reporting duty under Section 205 would be impossible to discharge honestly. The Company Secretary also has the right to be consulted by the Board on matters bearing on legal and procedural compliance, since it is ultimately the Company Secretary's certification the Board, the shareholders, and the Registrar will rely upon, and the right to attend meetings of the Board and of shareholders in order to record their proceedings accurately, rather than having to reconstruct minutes second-hand. …