The SC in Glas Trust Co. LLC v. Byju Raveendran,[1] held that the inherent powers of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (‘NCLAT’) cannot be used to subvert legal provisions which exhaustively provide for a procedure. The SC observed that when a procedure has been prescribed for a particular purpose exhaustively, no power can be exercised otherwise than in the manner prescribed by the provisions and in this case, Section 12A of the IBC, read with Regulation 30A of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (Insolvency Resolution Process For Corporate Persons) Regulations, 2016. In such cases, the Court must be circumspect in invoking its ‘inherent powers’ to deviate from the prescribed procedure and such deviation must be made only with a justification on why it was necessary to ‘prevent the abuse of process of the Court’.
[1] Glas Trust Co. LLC v. Byju Raveendran, 2024 SCC OnLine SC 3032.