Bankruptcy law can be extended to cross-border assets: Corp affairs secy

Corporate affairs secretary Injeti Srinivas on Saturday said the evolving insolvency and bankruptcy law can be extended to cross-border assets.

The government is also in looking at hiring more members to the national company law tribunals to further strengthen the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) process, said a corporate affairs ministry official.

"A committee has been set up to look into the cross-border insolvency process. It will formulate a process to deal with international assets of any company. Based on the committee reports a final decision on it will be taken," Srinivas said without elaborating.

Meanwhile, addressing the same CII event on insolvency here today Gyaneshwar Kumar Singh, joint secretary at the corporate affairs ministry said the government has received 500 applications for NCLT members and it is in the process of recruiting new members.

The government is also looking to increase number members at the Mumbai bench of the NCLT to four from one now, Singh said, adding, "we are going for a drive where the capacity of NCLT is increased in a substantial way".

Meanwhile, stating that his ministry has identified 50,000 shell companies, Srinivas said dormant companies are liable to get deregister.

"It's an ongoing process. We have identified about 200,000 companies. So far, 50,000 of them have got deregistered and as we move along we expect that a large number of companies will get deregistered, he said.

But there is a due process that has to be followed to give companies an opportunity to defend their case, he added.