Litigant cannot be shown the door for NCLAT portal failure: Supreme Court restores appeal filed one day late

The Supreme Court recently held that a litigant cannot be denied relief merely on account of a delay in filing an appeal when the delay is caused entirely by a fault on a tribunal or court's e-filing portal [Regional Provident Fund Commissioner-II v. Ms Mamta Binani and Others]..A Bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu made the observation in a case where an appeal in an insolvency resolution case was filed with a delay of one day because earlier attempts to e-file the appeal failed due to glitches on the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal's (NCLAT) online portal.“Should a litigant be shown the door at the very first instance due to e-filing of an appeal beyond the statutorily condonable period, particularly when such a filing has been delayed for bona fide reasons beyond the litigant’s control and when the fault was entirely at the end of the Registry of the NCLAT? We think not!” the Supreme Court said in its September 10 ruling..Should a litigant be shown the door when a filing has been delayed for bona fide reasons beyond the litigant’s control, when the fault was entirely at the end of the Registry of the NCLAT? We think not!Supreme Court.The Bench also invoked the principle of actus curiae neminem gravabit, which means that an act of the court should prejudice no one.“When the system of the court/tribunal fails to receive the papers, which are sought to be presented bona fide and within the prescribed time, the litigant cannot be rendered remediless on the specious ground that the court/tribunal has no power to condone the delay,” the judgment stated..The matter before the Court was tied to insolvency proceedings concerning Rolta India Limited. In December 2025, the Mumbai Bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) approved a resolution plan submitted by Ashdan Properties Private Limited for the company. Aggrieved by the approval of the plan, the Regional Provident Fund Commissioner-II (RPFC) decided to challenge the NCLT order before the NCLAT..The NCLAT, however, dismissed the RPFC's appeal as time-barred since it was filed one day beyond the limitation period prescribed under Section 61(2) of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC).Section 61(2) ordinarily gives an aggrieved party 30 days to challenge an order of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT). The NCLAT may allow an additional 15 days if sufficient cause is shown. It cannot ordinarily entertain an appeal filed after this maximum period of 45 days.In the present case, the initial 30-day period for filing the appeal expired on January 14, 2026. The additional 15-day period available for seeking condonation of delay ended on January 29. Thus, January 29 was the last date on which the appeal could be filed..The RPFC’s counsel first attempted to file the appeal through the NCLAT’s online portal on January 28. However, due to technical defects in the e-filing portal, the appeal could not be e-filed that day.The RPFC tried again on January 29. The NCLAT Registry, however, informed it that there was a technical problem at the backend and that repairs were taking time.The appeal was eventually filed on January 30, making it one day late on record. On May 21, the NCLAT dismissed the appeal without examining the underlying challenge. It held that it had no power to condone a delay beyond the maximum statutory period of 45 days.The RPFC then approached the Supreme Court against the dismissal..The Supreme Court noted that a May 6 report submitted by the NCLAT Registry itself confirmed that the RPFC had been trying to file the appeal since January 28 but could not do so because of problems with OTP delivery.The Court agreed that the NCLAT did not have the power to condone a delay beyond the 45-day limit. However, it pointed out that the delay in this case was not attributable to the RPFC.The Court opined that this was not a case of condoning a delay beyond the statutory limit. Rather, the NCLAT could have simply excluded the period during which its e-filing system was not functioning from the limitation period, the Court observed. This way, January 28, or the date of the first genuine attempt to upload the appeal, could have been treated as the date of the appeal before NCLAT, the Court said.The Supreme Court, therefore, set aside the NCLAT’s May 21 order and restored the RPFC’s appeal along with its application for the condonation of delay..Advocates Ajit Sharma, Kanchan Kumar Singh, Yuvrajsinh C Solanki, Anant Ram Mishra, Lareb Habib Ansari, Akshat Sharma, Amrit Keshri, Nandan Pradhan and Shweta Jain appeared for the RPFC..Advocates Sandeep Bajaj, Aakanksha Nehra, Ananya Pratap Singh and Shubham Jaiswal, along with M/s Lawfic, appeared for the respondents..[Read Judgment]