The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on Monday deferred hearing in a plea in the insolvency case of SREI Infrastructure to 4 October after the company sought time to submit a rejoinder to a response by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
Adisri Commercial, former promoter of SREI Infrastructure, had appealed to the NCLAT challenging the decision of Kolkata bench of the National Company Law Tribunal.
During the previous hearing, NCLAT had asked the RBI to file a reply to the plea within three weeks, which the banking regulator did.
In October 2021, the NCLT’s Kolkata bench in its order allowed the RBI’s plea under section 227 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016, thus admitting Srei Equipment under Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP).
An earlier plea by Commercial challenging the NCLT order was dismissed by NCLAT in December 2022.
In its latest plea, Commercial argued that its initial appeal was dismissed due to a filing delay and was not evaluated on its merits, as it was denied notice. The company claims it doesn’t owe the debt as asserted by the RBI and wasn’t given the chance to prove the absence of debt.
The RBI argued that revisiting the dismissed appeal would disrupt the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process, reset the timeline, and set a risky precedent. The Supreme Court’s previous dismissal of the appeal raises doubts about recalling the order.
In October 2021, the RBI had replaced the boards of SREI Infrastructure Finance and subsidiary SREI Equipment Finance due to governance and default concerns.
In August of this year, the Kolkata bench of NCLT approved the resolution plan of National Asset Reconstruction Company (NARCL) for takeover of twin Srei firms under Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. The resolution plan had received approval from the RBI.
Since the approval of the resolution plan, NARCL has disbursed approximately ₹2,580 crore to creditors.