The National Company Law Tribunal today directed the Indirapuram Habitat Centre Shop Owner Association to file an affidavit of all members supporting this association by authorizing one of the members of those members to represent the aforesaid application
The Principal bench comprising ACTG President, B.S.V. Prakash Kumar and member, Hemant Kumar Sarangi noted,
“the associations are not expected to represent the matter before this Adjudicating Authority because it is not known to this Bench how many members are representing the association, whether all those members are authorized this association to place their grievance before this Bench.”
The present application has been filed by the Shop Owners Association namely Indirapuram Habitat Centre Shop Owner Association Representative of the Financial Creditors in a class of Corporate Debtor seeking reliefs, to direct RP to remove voting rights of all the related persons who have been declared so in the forensic report submitted by Deloitte and to direct the RP not to put any resolution plan to vote till the voting rights of the related parties are removed.
In earlier proceedings, it was submitted that the Insolvent property sold to around 2000 allottees, around 300 were handed over shops and commercial spaces. The NCLT order came after the company Diamond Traexim, a real estate investor, raised an insolvency proceeding against Indirapuram Habitat Centre under IBC, 2016 for non-payment of a loan worth Rs. 32 crore. The lawyer on behalf of the buyers of commercial space at IHC said that the developers had sold shops and then mortgaged them for further funding. The buyers as well as those who had lent money are the parties to the insolvency proceedings.
The Applicants submitted that the forensic report submitted by Deloitte revealed that M/s. P.S. Diama and M/s. Maya Buildcon and several others are related parties making claims of Rs. 79,95,40,900/-. The applicants have been sending e-mails to the RP through Authorized Representative asking them to rectify the claim list with genuine investors by removing the related parties from the COC. The Applicant further submitted that the said investors continued to be a member of COC which is detrimental to the interest of genuine investors and allottees who put their money for the units from the Corporate Debtor.
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The bench held,
“unless the issue of related parties is examined and adjudicated, any plan i.e. approved while related parties continuing as COC members will vitiate the proceedings taken up under IBC. Moreover, when an allegation has been made against some parties as related parties and if the same issue is placed before them for adjudication, such adjudication cannot be called fair because the voting power of those related parties will have bearing on the decisions taken by the CCC.”
The Association is asked to place an affidavit comprising all members who are supporting this association by authorizing one of the members of those members to represent the aforesaid application by the next date of hearing i.e. 13.04.2021.