On 15 November 2019 a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court delivered the most consequential IBC judgment of the post-*Swiss Ribbons* era. The Bench held that the Committee of Creditors' commercial wisdom on the distribution of resolution-plan proceeds — including unequal treatment of financial and operational creditors — is paramount; that the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal had erred in directing equal pro-rata distribution; that the *Section 53* waterfall is a guide but the CoC retains discretion subject to the *Section 30(2)(b)* minimum-liquidation-value floor; that the 'mandatorily' in the amended *Section 12* 330-day proviso is to be read down as directory in exceptional cases; and that the resolution applicant takes the corporate debtor on a 'clean slate' — claims not in the plan stand extinguished.
On 5 February 2019 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court held that the Committee of Creditors' commercial wisdom in approving or rejecting a resolution plan by the requisite voting majority is non-justiciable. The National Company Law Tribunal's judicial review under *Section 31* is confined to *Section 30(2)* compliance — it cannot second-guess the CoC's commercial judgment. On rejection of all plans by the CoC, the Adjudicating Authority is obliged to initiate liquidation under *Section 33(1)*. The decision is the foundational articulation of the commercial-wisdom doctrine that organises post-2019 IBC jurisprudence.
On 6 September 2022 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court, in State Tax Officer (1) v. Rainbow Papers Ltd, read Section 48 of the Gujarat Value Added Tax Act 2003 — which creates a first charge on the dealer's property in respect of VAT dues — as creating a 'security interest' by operation of law within Section 3(31) of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, with the consequence that the State became a 'secured creditor' under Section 3(30) and a resolution plan that wholly ignored the statutory dues was non-compliant with Section 30(2). A coordinate bench in Paschimanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam v. Raman Ispat then confined the holding to its facts. A close reading of the GVAT-IBC architecture, the Section 53 waterfall analysis, the doctrinal arc that has followed, and what practitioners advising resolution applicants and statutory authorities should take from the case.