Supreme Court dismisses Go First plea against Delhi High Court nod to aircraft lessors to access planes

The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed the appeal by Go First Airlines against the Delhi High Court order allowing aircraft lessors to access the aircrafts they had leased to the airline. [Go Airlines India Limited vs SMBC Aviation Capital Limited].A bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra underlined that Go First had already presented its arguments before a single judge of the High Court, and thus, there was no valid reason to restrain the ongoing proceedings before him.Moreover, since the petitions before the High Court were being argued on a daily basis, the Court refused to entertain the plea. It also directed the petitioners to present jurisdictional issued before the single-judge. "We will not entertain. Since proceedings pending before Delhi High Court where petitions are being argued on day to day basis. We are not entertaining this at the present stage. Let the jurisdictional issues also be addressed before the single judge," the Court said..The apex court was hearing a plea by Go First Airlines challenging Delhi High Court Division Bench order that had upheld directions to allow aircraft lessors access to the airlines' planes.On July 5, a single-judge of High Court had passed an interim order allowing aircraft lessors access to the planes they had leased out to Go First Airlines. The single-judge had also allowed the lessors to carry out maintenance work on the planes.Go First had then challenged this order before a Division Bench of the High Court, which declined to interfere but asked the single-judge to decide the matter expeditiously.The Division Bench modified one of the directions to the extent that Go First can carry out all maintenance tasks of the aircrafts, their engines and other parts and components. Go First then filed the present appeal before the top court..The issue arose after several aircraft lessors had approached the High Court stating that they had filed applications for the de-registration of their aircrafts, but the same were rejected by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).It was argued that the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) did not have relevant provisions for dealing with cases pertaining to de-registration, and hence, even bankruptcy tribunals were not competent to hear their pleas.These applications were after Go First had moved the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) in Delhi to initiate the corporate insolvency resolution process under the IBC.The NCLT Delhi had, on May 10, admitted the plea and declared a moratorium for the company. It also directed the company's suspended board of directors to co-operate with the Interim Resolution Professional to ensure there are no layoffs.The NCLT's decision to initiate insolvency proceedings was upheld by the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) in an order pronounced on May 22..Senior Advocates Shyam Divan and Ramji Srinivasan with advocates Pratiksha Mishra, Shreyas Edupuganti, Vishnu Shriram, Kaarunya Lakshmi, Namrata Saraogi, and Kartik Pandey appeared for Go Airlines.Senior Advocates Mukul Rohatgi and Dhruv Mehta with advocates Vaijayant Paliwal, Medha Sachdev, Meghna Rajadhyaksha, Rishabh Jaisani, Riya Basu, Mehak Nayak, Harit Lakhani, Keshav Sehgal, SS Shroff, Marylou Bilawala, Dhruv Khanna, Sharleen Lobo, Priya Desai, Chiranjivi Sharma, Apoorva Kaushik, Neetika Sharma, Girish Shankar, Uday Mathur, Shyam Agarwal, Pranaya Goyal, Pai Amit, Nimish Vakil, Bhavana Duhoon, and Abhiyudaya Vats represented the lessors..[Read order]