SC Clarifies Section 62 Limitation Under IBC

The Hon’ble Supreme Court, in CA Ramchandra Dallaram Choudhary v. Adani Infrastructure and Developers Private Limited (D. No. 5988 of 2026), dismissed an appeal filed under Section 62 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC) as time-barred and held that delays in re-filing defective appeals beyond the period prescribed under the Supreme Court Rules, 2013 cannot be condoned. The Court clarified that once the statutory timelines under the IBC and the period available for curing defects expire, the right to appeal stands extinguished.

The appeal arose from a judgment and order dated 8 December 2025 passed by the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), Principal Bench, New Delhi, in Company Appeal (AT) (Ins.) No. 2316 of 2024. The appellant was the liquidator of a corporate debtor under liquidation.

The appeal was presented before the Supreme Court on 29 January 2026. Although it was filed beyond the forty-five-day limitation period prescribed under Section 62(1) of the IBC, it fell within the additional fifteen-day period contemplated under Section 62(2). The Registry, however, reported a delay of seven days in filing and marked the appeal as defective. After curing the defects, the appeal was re-filed with a further delay of eighty-two days, leading the appellant to file separate applications seeking condonation of the filing delay and the re-filing delay.

The appellant argued that the delay in re-filing resulted from an internal oversight in the office of the liquidator. It was contended that delays in refiling are generally treated more liberally than delays in filing and may be condoned upon sufficient cause being shown. Reliance was also placed on an earlier decision in CA Ramchandra Dallaram Choudhary v. Adani Infrastructure & Developers (P) Ltd., [(2025) SCC OnLine SC 1406], where delay in re-filing an appeal under Section 61 of the IBC had been condoned on the ground that the delay was principally attributable to lapses on the part of counsel and their clerk and that the interests of justice warranted a liberal construction of “sufficient cause” so that the dispute could be decided on merits.

The court examined the framework governing re-filing under the Supreme Court Rules, 2013. Referring to Rule 6(3) and (4) of Order VIII, it noted that defects in petitions and appeals may be cured within twenty-eight days of notification by the Registry. A litigant who fails to cure the defects within that period may re-file the matter together with an application seeking condonation of the re-filing delay, the grant of which is ordinarily discretionary.

Further, the Court remarked that the earlier decision in CA Ramchandra Dallaram Choudhary v. Adani Infrastructure & Developers (P) Ltd arose from an appeal under Section 61 of the IBC in which the NCLAT had refused to condone delay in re-filing. After the NCLAT declined to condone the delay, the Supreme Court, by order dated 5 May 2025, set aside the NCLAT’s order and remanded the matter for consideration on merits. Significantly, the Court observed that the earlier order had expressly stated that it was not to be treated as a precedent.

Rejecting the appellant’s submissions, the court observed that Section 62 permits an appeal to be filed within forty-five days, with a grace period of fifteen days upon sufficient cause being shown. The maximum permissible period for instituting an appeal is therefore sixty days, beyond which the Court lacks jurisdiction to condone delay.

Reiterating its earlier decisions in Mobilox Innovations (P) Ltd. v. Kirusa Software (P) Ltd. [(2018) 1 SCC 353] and Kalparaj Dharamshi v. Kotak Investment Advisors Limited [(2021) 10 SCC 401], the Court emphasised that strict compliance with statutory timelines and time-bound resolution are central features of the IBC framework.

The Court observed that a defectively filed appeal cannot be used to indefinitely preserve a limitation and that an appeal must be brought into a form capable of being acted upon within the time permitted by law. Permitting litigants to file defective appeals merely to save limitation and thereafter cure defects at leisure would defeat the objective of the IBC and undermine the discipline of timelines in the insolvency process.

While defects may ordinarily be cured within twenty-eight days under the Supreme Court Rules, the Court held that the Rules constitute subordinate legislation and cannot override the statutory scheme enacted under the IBC. Describing Section 62 as a complete code governing appeals to the Supreme Court, the Court held that once the sixty-day period prescribed under the IBC and the twenty-eight-day period available for curing defects are exhausted, the right to appeal stands extinguished, and no condonation of re-filing delay is permissible.

The Court also declined to invoke its powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to relax the statutory timelines. It observed that the IBC does not create any separate limitation regime for liquidators or other insolvency professionals and that courts cannot introduce exceptions not contemplated by Parliament.

Accordingly, the Supreme Court held that the appellant had failed to establish sufficient cause for the delays. More importantly, it held that once the outer limit prescribed under Section 62 of the IBC, read with the permissible period for curing defects, stood exhausted, the court lacked jurisdiction to entertain the appeal. The appeal was therefore dismissed as time-barred, along with the connected applications.