NCLAT Refuses To Condonе 193-Day Delay, Says Registry Need Not Identify All Defective Documents

The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) has refused to condone a 193-day delay in refiling an insolvency appeal by Walchandnagar Industries Limited, holding that the appellant could not blame the Registry for repeatedly pointing out defects in its filings, including handwritten pages requiring typed copies and Hindi-language documents needing English translations.

"The Applicant having filed the appeal petition themselves were fully aware of the hand-written and vernacular-based documents which had been submitted by them. Being aware of the documents/records, the Applicant ought to have assumed the responsibility to cure the defects in a composite and comprehensive manner rather than wait for the Registry to remind them repeatedly of the documents which required to be typed out and translated," the tribunal said.

The bench of Chairperson Justice Ashok Bhushan and Technical Member Barun Mitra passed the order while rejecting Walchandnagar's application seeking condonation of delay in refiling an appeal arising from insolvency proceedings involving Swaraj India Agro Ltd. The tribunal also rejected the appeal.

Walchandnagar had argued that the effective delay was only 153 days and not 193 days after excluding the seven-day period allowed to cure defects after each round of Registry objections.

The company said the first round of defects had been cured within time and that the major delay arose after the second defect notice in August 2025, when the Registry flagged the need for typed copies of handwritten documents and English translations of Hindi-language records.

According to Walchandnagar, the Registry had identified only sample pages and not every defective page. It argued that each time typed or translated copies were submitted, additional defects were pointed out, making the process time-consuming.

The company also said reconstructing old non-digitised records took time, especially since the project manager familiar with the documents had retired.

Rejecting this explanation, the tribunal noted that the Registry's defect notice had used “etc.” after listing sample page numbers, making it clear that the defects were generic and not confined to only the listed pages.

“It was not necessary for the Registry to point out all the hand-written documents which required to be typed out or list out all the documents/records in vernacular language which had to be translated into English,” the tribunal said.

The tribunal also found the explanation regarding the retired employee to be frivolous, noting that the company's own affidavit showed the employee had retired in 2020, while the appeal was filed in 2025.

“Furthermore, the explanation for delay offered by the Applicant with respect to translation of vernacular documents and typing out of hand-written documents on the ground that the person who was the primary custodian of the documents was no longer available was a frivolous ground,” it observed.

The tribunal also rejected Walchandnagar's attempt to exclude the seven-day cure periods from the delay calculation.

“This methodology of computing the period of delay is not correct. As long as the defects are not fully cured, the period of 7 days' time allowed to correct the defects as and when pointed out by the Registry cannot be precluded from calculating the total period of refiling delay,” the tribunal held.

Finding no sufficient cause for the prolonged delay, the tribunal dismissed the condonation application and rejected the appeal.