The court emphasized a liberal approach in condoning delays in re-filing appeals, provided sufficient cause is shown, acknowledging genuine efforts made by appellants to rectify defects.

ORDER

ASHOK BHUSHAN, J.

This is an application praying for condonation of refiling delay of 164 days.

2. Appellant filed additional affidavit in support of the condonation of refiling delay. Respondents have filed reply to the I.A. to which a rejoinder has also been filed by the applicant.

3. The applicant’s case in the application is that challenging the order passed by the adjudicating authority dated 04.08.2023, the Company Appeal was filed on 14.09.2023 with delay of 11 days. (11 days in filing the appeal has already been condoned by our order dated 04.03.2025). The applicant’s case is that appeal was filed on 14.09.2023, and thereafter the defects were marked by the Registry on 22.09.2023. Time was taken to cure such defects, certain annexures were handwritten, hence they were required to be typed out. In the additional affidavit filed by the appellant, appellant in paragraphs 2, 5, 6 & 7, following has been pleaded:

“2. The present Appeal has been filed against the Impugned Order dated 04.08.2023 passed by the Ld. National Company Law Tribunal, Mumbai Bench in the Company Petition (IB) No. 4100/MB/2019. The Memo of Appeal was presented before this Tribunal on 141 h September, 2023. After the scrutiny of Memo of Appeal, the defects were intimated on 22nd September 2023. The Memo of Appeal was re-fi1ed on 1st March, 2024, after the delay of 154 days along with the Interlocutory Application No. 1680 of2024 for seeking condonation of delay in re-filing the appeal under Rule 31 read with Rule 11, 14 and 26 of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal Rules , 2016 (’NCLAT Rules’ herein).

5. The Applicant submits that there are eight appellants in this Appeal and all are running their business across the country, resultantly, all such documents which are approximately 21 in number and mostly with regard to the Bank details, led to the difficulty in fetching them in a clear and visible form. That the applicant submits that such running of the individual business across the country by all the appellants and getting the documents from them, came in the way of rectifying the defects in a short duration of 30 days.

6. In furtherance, the Applicant submits that in order to rectify the defect number 7 of the defect list, for removing the old marked ’Exhibit/Annexures’ consumed loads of time firstly, in fetching the original one and getting some of them typed, which again was the time consuming as the authorised translator, unfortunately died, due to the sudden attack in the month of October, 2023, which further created difficulty to get those documents typed again.

7. The Applicant submits that the authorised representative of all the eight corporate debtors (appellants) faced difficulty in fetching of the Affidavit of all eight appellants, despite of submission of the ’power of attorney’ on behalf of all the appellants, the registry was not accepting, though, later on it was accepted and rectified the defect. (In the defect list as defect Number 6).”

4. Learned counsel for the respondent filed a reply objecting to the condonation of refiling delay. In paragraph 4 of the reply following has been stated by the respondent:

“4. That for the convenience of this Hon’ble Tribunal, the Respondent seeks to place the following Paragraph-Wise rebuttal of those paragraphs of the said Additional Affidavit, wherein averments pertaining to the delay are made: