Authority: National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), Kolkata Bench
Order Date: 12 June 2026
Case Overview
This order pertains to Company Petition (I.B.C) No. 135/KB/2023, an application filed under Section 7 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), 2016. The Financial Creditor/Applicant, Ashley Brian Hyams, sought the initiation of a Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP) against the Corporate Debtor/Respondent, Greentech City Private Limited. The default was alleged to have occurred concerning a financial debt of ₹2,24,78,796.81. This debt arose from an Agreement for Sale dated 24.11.2016 for a villa in the 'Aqua Golf Villa' project, where the Applicant claimed to have made substantial payments starting from 2013 but possession was not delivered within the stipulated 24-month period.
The Applicant's principal arguments were that the default was a continuing breach, making the petition within limitation; that the project lacked requisite approvals from Gram Panchayat and RERA, making them the only known allottee; and that statutory interest was payable under RERA. The Corporate Debtor contested the petition, arguing it was an abuse of process, filed by a single allottee far below the statutory threshold, barred by limitation, and that the principal amount claimed was below the ₹1 crore threshold if interest was excluded.
A significant part of the proceedings involved the exchange of supplementary affidavits. The Respondent claimed the project had 41 allotted units and provided documents like a sanction map, completion certificate, and possession notices to other buyers to prove the existence of multiple allottees. The Applicant countered this by filing RTI replies from the Chandpur Gram Panchayat dated 28.06.2025, which stated that no sanction plan or completion certificate for the project existed in their records.
Final Outcome
The NCLT Bench dismissed the petition. Its analysis focused solely on the second proviso to Section 7(1) of the IBC, inserted by the Insolvency and Bankruptcy (Amendment) Act, 2020. This proviso mandates that for real estate projects, an application must be filed jointly by either a minimum of 100 allottees or 10% of the total allottees of the same project, whichever is less. The Tribunal held that the Applicant, being a single allottee, failed to meet this mandatory threshold requirement for maintaining the application. It relied on the Supreme Court's judgment in Manish Kumar Vs. Union of India upholding the constitutionality of this threshold, and orders from the NCLT Principal Bench (Surinder Kumar Jain) and NCLAT (Dheeraj Raikhy, Neha Khanna) which consistently held that a single allottee cannot trigger insolvency. The petition was dismissed on this maintainability ground without adjudicating the merits of the default, limitation, or the exact debt amount.
Topics: Real Estate Insolvency, IBC Section 7, Homebuyer Rights