2015 (9) TMI 1587

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.... to be sustaine d is of Regulation 44 of the Company Law Board Regulations, 1991. The argument has to be rejected out of hand since a tribunal, as opposed to the representative of the sovereign as a Court, cannot confer jurisdiction on itself that the statute that brings the tribunal into existence has not afforded it. The appeal is directed against a one-page order of the principal bench of the CLB passed on August 10, 2015 on procee dings under Sections 237, 247 and 250 of the Companies Act, 1956. The first paragrap h of the order directs, rather unusually, that the balance sheets, profit and loss acco unts, directors' report s and annual reports of the company be made over by the company to the petitioners before the CLB by the adjour....

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....junction restraining the company from making payment to another creditor of the company. The petitioners have relied on a judgment reported at (2007) 4 CHN 712, which was followed in an unreported order of October 24, 2008 passed in T No.108 of 2008 (Birla Corporation Limited vs. Rameshwara Jute Mill Company Limited). A Division Bench judgement reported at (1998) 4 Comp.LJ 299 and a Supreme Court judgment reported at (1994) 4 SCC 225 have been placed for the proposition that the relevant provision must confer authority on a tribunal to pass an ad interim order for such an order to be sustained. In the relevant discussion at paragraphs 39 to 42 of the report in the Division Bench judgment, the Court noticed Regulation 44 of the said Regulati....

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....But it would be evident from, in particular, Section 247 of the Act that the ultimate purpose of the exercise is to obtain an order of investigation. It cannot be said that an adjudicatio n of the company's alleged liability to the petitioners before the CLB or the company' s alleged liability to another creditor could have been undertaken by the CLB in course of the proceedings before it. If such is the case, the CLB did not have any authority to pass the order impugned, particularly to restrain the company from making any payment to a creditor. The constitutional scheme of things requires Courts or quasi judicial authorities to operate within the bounds of their authority. Merely because there is a complaint or some wrong-doing is a....