A company can be said to have vanished only if there is no address of the company. In India, getting a company incorporated and then listed is not a very difficult task. Each exchange needs companies to meet with certain listing norms. For instance, a company, to get listed at the BSE, has to have an issued equity capital of Rs 100 million and above. It also has to submit a copy of annual results every year.
Some companies purposely default to get delisted so that they can disappear.
We've been requesting successive governments to enact stringent laws, but all in vain. While as many as 550 companies got delisted from the BSE since the early '90s, not many got off the National Stock Exchange. The committee report was recently submitted, details of which are still not freely available. A look at the number of complaints that pile up at SEBI every day reflects the enormity of the problem. Only 1085 grievances were reportedly resolved by 238 companies.