CA Ramchandra Dallaram Choudhary v. Adani Infrastructure (2026): the hard outer limits of a Section 62 IBC appeal

Decided on 1 June 2026, CA Ramchandra Dallaram Choudhary v. Adani Infrastructure and Developers Private Limited is a bright-line ruling on limitation under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016. A Bench of Justices Dipankar Datta (who authored the opinion) and Satish Chandra Sharma refused to condone delay in a Section 62 appeal brought by the liquidator of a corporate debtor, and in doing so mapped, with unusual precision, the two independent clocks that govern such an appeal: the statutory limitation clock in Section 62 itself, and the defect-curing clock in the Supreme Court Rules, 2013. Once both run out, the Court held, the appeal is dead — and no plea of "sufficient cause," however sympathetic, can revive it.

The facts

The appeal challenged an NCLAT order dated 8 December 2025 in Comp. App. (AT) (Ins) No. 2316 of 2024. It was presented on 29 January 2026 — beyond the limitation period in Section 62(1), but within the grace period under Section 62(2). The Registry reported a delay of seven days in filing and marked the appeal defective. After the defects were cured, the appeal was re-filed only after a further delay of 82 days. The appellant filed separate applications to condone both the filing delay and the re-filing delay.

The appellant was not an ordinary litigant but the liquidator of the corporate debtor — a neutral officer, senior counsel Mr. Fernandes urged, acting under the aegis of the Court for the benefit of all stakeholders, whose insignificant delays should be viewed liberally rather than strictly.

The two clocks under Section 62

The Court began with first principles. The scheme of limitation under the IBC, it stressed, is "strict and time-bound," and the very concept of condonation of delay is "alien to the statutory framework beyond the period expressly contemplated under the statute." Section 62 permits an appeal within 45 days, with a further grace period of only 15 days, and that too only on sufficient cause. The outer statutory limit is therefore 60 days, "beyond which the appeal itself becomes barred and the Court's jurisdiction to condone the delay ceases."

This is not a new theme. The Court drew on Mobilox Innovations (P) Ltd. v. Kirusa Software (P) Ltd., (2018) 1 SCC 353, for the proposition that strict adherence to Section 62's timelines is "of essence" to the insolvency process, and on Kalparaj Dharamshi v. Kotak Investment Advisors Limited, (2021) 10 SCC 401, for time-bound resolution as the essence of the Code. It also invoked a line of Section 61 authority — National Spot Exchange Ltd. v. Dunar Foods Ltd., V. Nagarajan v. SKS Ispat & Power Ltd. and Tata Steel Limited v. Raj Kumar Banerjee — reaffirming that condonation beyond the period expressly prescribed is impermissible. In PEC Ltd. v. Phulchand Exports Private Ltd., a 21-day delay in a Section 62 appeal was held beyond the maximum condonable period; in Saturn Ventures and Advisors Pvt. Limited v. S. Gopalakrishnan, 2025 SCC OnLine SC 2484, even a two-day delay was not condoned because the Court had no power to do so.

The defect-curing clock in the SCR

The genuinely instructive part of the judgment addresses the second clock. Sub-rules (3) and (4) of Rule 6 of Order VIII of the Supreme Court Rules, 2013, govern the re-filing of appeals after curing defects. A period of 28 days is earmarked for curing defects; a litigant who fails to cure within that window may re-file together with an application to condone the re-filing delay, condonation being discretionary.

The precise question the Bench posed to counsel was this: where a Section 62 appeal is filed within time (or within the 60-day outer limit) but is marked defective, can the Court condone delay in re-filing if the defects are not cured within 28 days? The appellant's answer was that re-filing delay is treated more leniently than filing delay, that the SCR imposes no cap, and that sufficient cause — not the length of delay — should be decisive.

The Court rejected the argument root and branch. An appeal, to be regarded as instituted within the prescribed period, "must be a defect-free appeal," capable of being placed before the Bench immediately. A defective appeal is, for all practical and legal purposes, no appeal filed within time. To permit a litigant to lodge a defective appeal "as a device to save limitation" and then cure the defects "at leisure" would defeat the object of the IBC and render its discipline of timelines nugatory.

Subordinate legislation cannot override the Code

Central to the reasoning is the hierarchy of laws. The SCR, the Court held, is "the subordinate legislation in the field," and whenever the IBC and the SCR clash, the SCR cannot override the express provisions of the Code — the IBC must prevail as the statutory edict. The general principle that re-filing delay is judged less rigorously than filing delay holds true for ordinary proceedings under the Codes of Civil and Criminal Procedure or the Constitution, but Section 62 IBC "is a complete code in itself for filing of appeals and is different from other laws." An appeal under it "does not remain alive after the 28 (twenty-eight) day period allowable under the SCR for curing defects," and the lis stands frozen the moment the defects are not cured within that period.

The Court also declined to deploy Article 142 of the Constitution. The appellant's status as a neutral officer of the Court was no ground to dilute the express statutory timeframes; the IBC marks no different threshold for liquidators, and reading such an exception into the statute would be an impermissible interpretational exercise.

No serial condonations across appellate stages

The appellant leaned heavily on a coordinate-Bench order between the same parties — CA Ramchandra Dallaram Choudhary v. Adani Infrastructure & Developers (P) Ltd., 2025 SCC OnLine SC 1406 — where re-filing delay in a Section 61 appeal before the NCLAT had been condoned, the Court there stressing the greater leniency shown to lawyers' lapses than to litigants' lapses.

The Bench held that this earlier indulgence, far from helping the appellant, "only accentuates" why discretion could not be extended again. That earlier order was confined to its peculiar facts — and had itself been recorded as not to be treated as a precedent. The present case stood "on an entirely different pedestal," because the appellant now sought condonation not merely of re-filing delay but of delay in invoking the Court's Section 62 jurisdiction, after having already availed a liberal construction of "sufficient cause" at the previous stage of the same litigation. A litigant who has once secured indulgence, the Court warned, cannot assume that further defaults at the next appellate stage will automatically attract similar discretion; to hold otherwise "would render the law of limitation under the IBC progressively elastic at every successive stage of challenge." The IBC "does not countenance serial condonations of delay across successive appellate stages."

The outcome

The result followed inexorably. Where the statute erects an "insurmountable jurisdictional bar," no inquiry into the adequacy of the cause shown could change the consequence — though the Court added, for completeness, that it found sufficient cause not to have been shown in any event. The defective appeal was dismissed as time-barred, "having been filed beyond the maximum period condonable in terms of the IBC," and the connected applications were dismissed.

Why it matters

For insolvency practitioners the operational rule is worth committing to memory. A Section 62 appeal has two independent deadlines, and both are jurisdictional: 45 days to file, extendable to 60 on sufficient cause; and, if the appeal is marked defective, 28 days from notification to cure those defects. Miss either and the appeal is extinguished — there is no residual power to condone, and no special dispensation for liquidators or other officers of the Court. The judgment is a pointed caution against the tactic of lodging a hurried, defective appeal to stop the limitation clock and then curing defects at leisure: the Court has now labelled that a device it will not countenance. It sits comfortably within the Code's larger insistence that insolvency is about time-bound finality, not indefinite litigation.

Related on Valkya

• GLS Films v. Chemical Suppliers India: Section 9 and Mobilox restated
• SC in Elegna v. Edelweiss: Section 7 and mandatory admission
• Anjani Technoplast v. Shubh Gautam: the IBC is not a recovery forum
• IBC May–June 2026 roundup

Sources

• Supreme Court of India, CA Ramchandra Dallaram Choudhary v. Adani Infrastructure and Developers Private Limited, 2026 INSC 629 (Judgment dated 1 June 2026)