The Appellate Tribunal dismissed the appeal filed by the...

The Appellate Tribunal dismissed the appeal filed by the Petitioners seeking initiation of the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP) against the Corporate Debtor/Respondent. The key findings were: There was no loan agreement specifying the tenure, interest rate, or payment frequency. The only evidence was the Petitioners' ledger accounts maintained by the Corporate Debtor. The Petitioners did not submit any agreement obligating the Corporate Debtor to pay interest on the alleged loan. For a debt to qualify as a "financial debt," the amount advanced must be in consideration of the time value of money, which was absent in this case. The Adjudicating Authority rightly concluded that the Petitioners did not qualify as financial creditors since no money was disbursed with consideration for the time value. The Corporate Debtor claimed to have paid the entire principal and interest for which TDS was deducted, and the Petitioners did not dispute this. The dispute was only about recovering the claimed balance interest, which the Appellate Tribunal is not a forum for debt recovery. The Petitioners are free to raise the dispute before the appropriate forum for recovery of the balance claim, if any.