National Company Law Appellate Tribunal Dismisses Appeal For Being Time-Barred

National Company Law Appellate Tribunal Dismisses Appeal For Being Time-Barred

The Appellate Tribunal ruled that Section 61 of the IBC provides a period of one month for filing an appeal and the condonation period is of 15 days only

The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) dismissed an appeal filed against the order passed by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) at the Mumbai Bench, on the ground of it being time-barred.

The matter titled New Boilers Engineering v IDBI Bank Limited And Ors was heard by the Principal Bench of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal at New Delhi, comprising of Justice A.I.S. Cheema and Dr Alok Srivastava.

The bench did not go into the facts of the case and purely dealt with the legal aspect of the matter. The IDBI Bank Limited being the Respondent – Financial Creditor had filed an application u/S 7 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 against the Corporate Debtor – EPC Constructions India Ltd, which was admitted on 29 December 2017 and the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP) was approved by the NCLT on 25 November 2019. It was noted that the present appeal was filed on 9 April 2021.

The Appellant – Operational Creditor submitted that along with the reason for lockdown, he was not aware of the order passed against the Corporate Debtor. However, the bench noted that the Delay Condonation Application did not reveal the date of knowledge and thus, found the appeal to be time-barred.

The bench referred the Section 61 of the IBC, which provides a period of one month for filing the appeal and the condonation period is of 15 days beyond the period of appeal under Section 61(2) of the IBC.

The Tribunal concluded that this present belated effort of filing this appeal could not succeed when there was no appeal filed during the course of CIRP when the claim was rejected and thus, this appeal was dismissed on the ground of no substance.