CBIC issued SOP for NCLT cases in respect of the IBC

The CBIC vide Instruction No. 1083/04/2022 dated May 23, 2022 has issued a Standard Operating Procedure (“SOP”) for the National Company Law Tribunal (“NCLT”) cases in respect of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (“IBC”).

I am directed to inform that the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India. has requested that role of GST and Customs authorities in certain key issues under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 needs to be formulated. Further, GST and Customs Authorities have been classified as operational Creditors and are required to submit their claims against corporate debtors when the Corporate insolvency and resolution process is initiated and public announcement inviting claims is made by the insolvency professional.

A timeline of 90 days from the insolvency commencement date is available for filing of claims. However, it has been observed that there is an inordinate delay in filing of claims by Customs and GST authorities. This leads to their claims not being admitted and extinguished once a resolution plan is approved. It is also observed that the authorities then litigate on the rejection of each claims, despite the settled position that no claims can be raised once the plan is approved and no demands can be raised on the resolution applicant who has taken over the company through such a resolution plan.

One of the reasons for such delay in filing of claims is that concerned Zonal office has not received information regarding initiation of the process in timely manner. Accordingly, it has been proposed that IBBI would share the details of the public announcement on a regular basis to an identified office/ officer or a centralized system and hence it has been requested that such office/ officer/ system in CBIC needs to be identified and intimated to the IBBI for implementing the system for sharing of information.

Accordingly, please find enclosed guidelines (SOP) as (Annexure A) to ensure a robust mechanism of communication from the nominated officer to the field formations and vice-versa and subsequent monitoring of action taken by the field formations on such communication by the Nodal Officer. It may be noted that CBIC has nominated ADG, DGPM as the Nodal Officer, as has been detailed in the SOP, for this purpose.

The SOP along with Annexure A can be accessed at - https://www.cbic.gov.in/resources//htdocs-cbec/deptt_offcr/sop-nclt-24may2022.pdf