TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2025 (8) TMI 812
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.... I.A. No. 1950 of 2021 in Company Petition (IB) 306/MB/2020. By the said order, the NCLT allowed the interlocutory application filed by the Resolution Professional and approved the resolution plan submitted by the successful resolution applicant, Ashdan Properties Private Limited, the appellant before us. 4. Section 61(2) of the IBC prescribes that every appeal against an order of the Adjudicating Authority, i.e., the National Company Law Tribunal concerned, should be filed before the jurisdictional National Company Law Appellate Tribunal within 30 days. The proviso thereto, however, allows the said National Company Law Appellate Tribunal to permit the appeal to be filed even after expiry of the period of 30 days, if it is satisfied that there was sufficient cause for not filing the appeal within that time but such extended period shall not exceed 15 days. 5. It is an admitted fact that the NCLT pronounced the order in the subject I.A. on 23.06.2023. According to respondent No. 1, the said order was uploaded on the website on 26.06.2023. The appeal before the NCLAT was e-filed by respondent No. 1 on 25.07.2023, vide Diary No. 9910110/05909/2023. It is an admitted fact that a cert....
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....appeals for a conjoined disposal through its common judgment dated 01.07.2024. However, the fact remains that the e-filing of respondent No.1's appeal on 25.07.2023 was defective inasmuch as there was, admittedly, a delay in its filing but no application was filed for condonation of such delay and, secondly, the appeal was filed without a certified copy of the impugned order but no application was filed seeking exemption from filing such certified copy or seeking extension of time to do so. The consequences of such defective filing are what we have to consider presently. 8. Significantly, in V. Nagarajan v. SKS Ispat & Power Ltd. and others (2022) 2 SCC 244, a three-Judge Bench of this Court considered these very issues. It was noted that the IBC is a complete code in itself and overwrites any inconsistencies that may arise in the application of other laws. The further observations made in paragraph 25, 28 and 29 therein on limitation and filing of a certified copy are of relevance and are extracted hereunder: "25. The law on limitation with respect to IBC is settled and emphatic in its denunciation of delays [Essar Steel (India) Ltd. (CoC) v. Satish Kumar Gupta, (2020) 8 SCC 53....
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....s who are aggrieved by the outcome of their litigation. An appeal, if considered necessary and expedient by an aggrieved party, is expected to be filed forthwith without awaiting a free copy which may be received at an indefinite stage. Hence, the omission of the words "from the date on which the order is made available" for the purposes of computation of limitation in Section 61(2) IBC, is a consistent signal of the intention of the legislature to nudge the parties to be proactive and facilitate timely resolution." "29. On the question of a certified copy for filing an appeal against an order passed by NCLT under IBC, Rule 22(2) of the NCLAT Rules mandates that an appeal has to be filed with a certified copy of the "impugned order": "22. Presentation of appeal.-(1) Every appeal shall be presented in Form NCLAT-1 in triplicate by the appellant or petitioner or applicant or respondent, as the case may be, in person or by his duly authorised representative duly appointed in this behalf in the prescribed form with stipulated fee at the filing counter and non-compliance of this may constitute a valid ground to refuse to entertain the same. (2) Every appeal shall be accompanied....
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....ustice, as reiterated in Rule 14 of the NCLAT Rules, such discretionary waiver does not act as an automatic exception where litigants make no efforts to pursue a timely resolution of their grievance. On facts, the Bench held that, as the appellant had failed to apply for a certified copy, it rendered the appeal filed by him clearly barred by limitation. 10. The recent three-Judge Bench judgment of this Court in A Rajendra vs. Gonugunta Madhusudhan Rao and others 2025 INSC 447 affirmed this legal position. Copious reference was made by the Bench to the earlier decision in V Nagarajan (supra) and other case laws and it was observed that the incident which triggers limitation to commence is the date of pronouncement of the order and in a case of non-pronouncement of the order when the hearing concludes, the date on which the order is pronounced or uploaded on the website. It was pointed out that when the judgment is pronounced in open Court, the period of limitation would start running from that very day and an appellant would be entitled to seek relief under Section 12(2) of the Limitation Act, 1963, to exclude the period during which a certified copy was under preparation, if an ap....