NCLT Ahmedabad Rejects Kothamangalam Aggregates' Insolvency Plea Against ACC Limited
Sandhra Suresh
3 Sept 2026 4:11 PM IST
The Ahmedabad bench of the National Company Law Tribunal has rejected as not maintainable an insolvency plea filed by Kothamangalam Aggregates Prestressed Concrete Industries against ACC Limited over alleged unpaid dues of approximately ₹1.91 crore.
It held that most of the claimed dues were barred by limitation. The amount that remained within time was below the minimum required to start the insolvency process.
The order was passed by the bench of Judicial Member Chitra Hankare and Technical Member Dr VG Venkata Chalapathy.
The petitioner, a Kerala‑based partnership firm, entered into a Letter of Intent and Agreement dated 21 June 2019 with ACC Limited for hiring six transit mixers at ACC's Kochi plant for a three‑year period.
Under the agreement, ACC was liable to pay fixed monthly charges of ₹1,47,000 per mixer, along with diesel and transfer costs.
The firm alleged that despite deployment of mixers, ACC delayed payments and repeatedly invoked the force majeure clause during the COVID‑19 pandemic. Emails exchanged in 2020 showed ACC requesting deployment of mixers even while citing force majeure.
Later, ACC sought removal of two mixers citing liquidity concerns. It raised invoices under which payment was required within one month of raising the invoice, but the Corporate Debtor failed to clear the outstanding dues followed by a demand notice on 29 September 2022.
ACC disputed the claim in its reply dated 15 November 2022, denying liability. The petition was filed on 17 September 2025 seeking initiation of Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP).
The operational creditor argued that ACC was contractually bound to pay hire charges within 30 days of invoices. It maintained that the consolidated invoice covered the period September 2020 to August 2022, and even if earlier months were time‑barred, charges for June–August 2022 (Rs 20.82 lakh) were within limitation.
ACC argued that the demand notice was premature, as the invoice dated 28 September 2022 would only become due after 30 days, i.e., 28 October 2022. Thus, no default existed on 29 September 2022.
ACC further contended that invoices should have been raised monthly/weekly, not consolidated after two years, and that payments had already been made up to May 2021. It maintained that defaults prior to August 2022 were time‑barred.
The Bench noted that invoices from September 2020 to July 2022 were time‑barred. Only the invoice for 1–20 August 2022 was within limitation, but at Rs 5.88 lakh, it was below the statutory threshold.
The Tribunal rejected the petitioner's reliance on Section 5 of the Limitation Act, clarifying that condonation of delay does not apply to fresh insolvency petitions. It also held that ACC's reply notice did not amount to an acknowledgement of debt, as liability was expressly denied. Accordingly, the petition was rejected.
For Applicants: Advocates Aswin Gopakumar, Anwin Gopakumar, Aditya Venugopalan, Mahesh Chandran, Saranya Babu, Abhishek S, Rohit P, Adv and Gopika B S
For Respondents: Senior Advocate Rashesh Sajanwala with Advocate Shamik Bhatt