NCLT to hear second plea of Aircastle against Spicejet on June 17

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) Delhi will hear on June 17 the maintainability of aircraft lessor Aircastle (Ireland) Limited's second insolvency petition against low-cost carrier SpiceJet.

The NCLT on Tuesday asked Aircastle's counsel to explain how the second plea was maintainable against the same defaulter(SpiceJet).

The first plea filed by Dublin-based Aircastle in NCLT on April 28 was to initiate insolvency proceedings against the airline under Section 9 (application for initiation of corporate insolvency resolution process by the operational creditor) of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code(IBC) for unpaid dues of 49-odd crore.

The second plea filed on June 12 against the airline claims that SpiceJet has failed to pay its outstanding dues and also seeks to initiate insolvency proceedings.

The tribunal said that a creditor is entitled to file one insolvency plea at a time and if insolvency proceedings are already initiated against a corporate debtor(in this case SpiceJet) then additional claims of dues can be raised with the resolution professional.

A resolution professional looks after the company once the insolvency process has started.

The tribunal also said that the IBC’s intent was to reduce the burden on the company law tribunals and filing a second plea for another claim of unpaid dues may go against the heart of the Code. The NCLT also said that a creditor should not file multiple insolvency pleas for every one of its claims.

With this, the question before the tribunal is whether a creditor can initiate two simultaneous proceedings against a single defaulter.

Aircastle is set to argue in the next hearing on June 17. 

In the first case, a two-member Principal bench of President Ramalingam Sudhakar and Member Avinash K Srivastava of NCLT had issued a notice to Spicejet on May 8 to file their reply to Aircastle’s plea.

After this SpiceJet had filed an application questioning the maintainability of Aircastle's petition on the ground that the Dublin-based lessors plea had two defects.

The tribunal had on June 8 directed Aircastle to file a response to the application in two weeks. The application will now come up for hearing on July 17.

In addition to Aircastle’s petitions, three more petitions for insolvency resolution proceedings against SpiceJet are pending. The plea by Willis Lease Finance Corporation was filed on April 12, the one by Acres Buildwell Private Ltd was filed on February 4 and the one by Wilmington Trust SP Services (Dublin) Ltd was filed on June 11.

The Willis Lease Finance Corporation petition is likely to come up for hearing on July 4 and Wilmington Trust SP Services (Dublin) Ltd plea is likely to come up on June 16.