Judicial member of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) Chennai bench Justice (retd) Sharad Kumar Sharma on Thursday recused from hearing Riju Raveendran's appeal against the order of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) allowing Glas Trust and Aditya Birla Finance to be included in the company's Committee of Creditors (CoC).
Justice Sharma reasoned that since he was once a lawyer for the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), he cannot take up the matter. Byju's was admitted to the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP) on an plea filed by BCCI. He said,
"I was not only conducting cases for BCCI, I was also closely associated with the board and the players."
Justice Sharma had recused from hearing an appeal against the insolvency order in July as well.
Senior Advocates Arun Kathpalia and Arvindh Pandian appeared for the litigating parties today. The matter is now expected to be placed before NCLAT Chairperson Justice (retd) Ashok Bhushan.
On January 29, the NCLT called for the initiation of disciplinary proceedings against Pankaj Srivastava, the Resolution Professional (RP) of debt-ridden ed-tech company Byju's.
Judicial member K Biswal and technical member Ravichandran Ramaswamy passed the order while setting aside the RP's decision to exclude Glas Trust and Aditya Birla Finance from the CoC constituted to oversee the insolvency resolution process in respect of Byju's.
The NCLT said that the actions and decisions taken by the IRP were prejudicial to the interests of the CIRP and to the stakeholders. Further, the tribunal found that the conduct of IRP was not fit and proper or as expected from an officer of the tribunal.
Thus, it ordered the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) to initiate a disciplinary inquiry against the RP.
The tribunal further directed that the RP be removed, and that the newly constituted CoC comprising Glas Trust and Aditya Birla Finance, take a call on appointing a new RP. The NCLT has also quashed all the decisions made by the RP with the former CoC.
The tribunal has, however, not yet ruled on the application by the BCCI to settle its dispute with Byju's.
The Supreme Court had on October 23 last year allowed an appeal filed by US-based financial creditor Glas Trust challenging the NCLAT decision to halt insolvency proceedings initiated against Think & Learn, the parent company of Byju’s.
The judgment set aside the NCLAT order which accepted a settlement between Byju Raveendran and the BCCI, on whose plea the NCLT Bengaluru in July had admitted Byju's to the insolvency process. By its October order, the apex court remitted the matter back to NCLT to consider the application for settlement afresh.
Subsequently, Glas Trust and Aditya Birla Finance moved applications before the NCLT contending that the RP had recognised only one financial creditor, resulting in a CoC composed of a single entity with 100 per cent voting rights.
Meanwhile, the BCCI argued that its application under Section 12A of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) for withdrawal of the proceedings, must be heard first.