NEW DELHI, The Supreme Court described the situation as “bleak” and took suo motu cognizance of the delay in approval of resolution plans by national company law tribunals.
A resolution plan is a legal proposal under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code that aims to revive a distressed company through restructuring or acquisition.
A bench of Justices JP Pardiwala and KV Viswanathan on Wednesday also pointed out the shortage of manpower and infrastructure on NCLT benches across the country.
The Council said the issue needed to be addressed on a war footing, otherwise the purpose of activating the IBC would remain frustrated.
It directed the matter to be referred to Chief Justice of India Surya Kant for referring the matter to an appropriate judicial body.
The bench perused the report placed before it by the NCLT’s nodal body, which stated that 383 applications were awaiting approval of resolution plans across the country, with delays ranging from more than one month to more than 700 days.
The Supreme Court passed the order while hearing two petitions against the 2023 order passed by the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal.
While hearing the matter on April 16, the apex court noted that it had come to its attention that several approval applications were pending with the principal court of NCLT, New Delhi, as well as other courts for the past several years.
It asked the NCLT’s principal body to place before it details about the number of applications for approval of resolution plans that were pending, how long these pending applications had to wait, and why the approval applications had not been disposed of so far.
The bench also accused the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India as the respondent in the matter.
IBBI has been directed to provide necessary figures and statistics from across the country in relation to the queries raised by the court.
This article was generated from an automated news feed without any modifications to the text.
