The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) is set to re-evaluate the personal insolvency proceedings against Subhash Chandra, founder of the Zee Group. This decision follows the tribunal’s stay on an earlier ruling issued on August 25 by a smaller bench. The reassessment will be conducted by a five-member bench, which includes President Justice (retd) Anupinder Singh Grewal, Judicial Members Bachu Venkat Balaram Das and Mahendra Khandelwal, alongside Technical Members Atul Chaturvedi and Ravindra Chaturvedi.
The tribunal decided to halt the prior verdict due to the absence of a clear majority opinion. Consequently, the tribunal has issued notices to all involved parties and has restrained Subhash Chandra from transferring any property, either directly or indirectly, during the proceedings.
The case centers around a repayment strategy proposed by Chandra in response to personal insolvency proceedings initiated by Indiabulls Housing Finance Limited under Section 95 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). Chandra’s plan proposed a payment of ₹6.25 crore to creditors, against total admitted claims of ₹22,006.57 crore, with an additional ₹25 lakh set aside for insolvency process expenses.
Initially, the plan was reviewed by an NCLT bench comprising Judicial Member Ashok Kumar Bhardwaj and Technical Member Reena Sinha Puri, who expressed divergent views. Judicial Member Bhardwaj was inclined to approve the plan concerning only those creditors who supported it, allowing dissenting creditors to independently seek debt recovery. Conversely, Technical Member Puri rejected the plan citing significant procedural flaws by the resolution professional.
This stalemate led to a referral to a third member, Judicial Member Nilesh Sharma, as per Section 419(5) of the Companies Act, 2013. On August 25, Sharma ruled in favor of approving the plan while excluding claims filed by Anil Kumar on behalf of 960 individuals and Sunil Jain on behalf of 300 individuals. He mandated that the amounts initially allocated for these claims be redistributed among the remaining eligible creditors. Sharma further decreed that the approved plan would be binding on all creditors, including those who initially opposed it, in accordance with Section 115 of the IBC.
Upon returning to the original two-member bench, a session on August 31 revealed no consensus had been reached, as the Technical Member and Judicial Member offered differing conclusions, and the third member had imposed a binding decision on all creditors. Given the lack of unanimous agreement, the matter was referred back to the NCLT President, resulting in the formation of the current five-member bench tasked with re-examining the case.
