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A. Rajendra v. Gonugunta Madhusudhan Rao

Civil Appeal · 2025 INSC 447Decided 4 Apr 2025
C.A. No.-011070-011071 - 2024 (@ Diary No. 10029 of 2024)

Background

The appellant, a shareholder and suspended Managing Director of a corporate debtor, had asked the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) to let his resolution plan be placed before the Committee of Creditors instead of a rival plan; that application was dismissed, and a competing resolution plan was approved. His two appeals to the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) against these NCLT orders were filed without certified copies and, when challenged as time-barred, were supported by applications for condonation of delay that the NCLAT found to be based on incorrect and shifting statements about when certified copies were sought or received.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court upheld the NCLAT's dismissal of both appeals as barred by limitation. Under Section 61(2) of the IBC, an appeal must be filed within 30 days of the NCLT's order, extendable by only 15 more days on sufficient cause shown: a limit the Court held must be strictly, not liberally, construed. Relying on its earlier ruling in V. Nagarajan v. SKS Ispat, the Court reiterated that limitation runs from the date of pronouncement of the order, not from when a certified copy is later made available, and that a litigant must actually apply for a certified copy to claim any exclusion of time under Section 12(2) of the Limitation Act. Since the appellant never applied for a certified copy in either appeal (and had made contradictory averments about this in his pleadings), both appeals were rightly dismissed as time-barred.

Lesson Learnt

Under the IBC, appeals to the NCLAT must be filed within 30 days of the tribunal's order (extendable by a maximum of 15 more days for sufficient cause): a litigant cannot wait for a certified copy or claim ignorance of the order's contents to escape this hard deadline, and must proactively apply for the certified copy to get any benefit of excluded time.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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