The case where the law changed mid-game — and still won. Sit in the Gallery for a ₹104-crore resignation and a petition killed by a law born three weeks after it was filed. Step up to the Bar for the COVID window and the date that decides everything. Take the Bench for the over-readings already loose in the market.
Most readers start in the Gallery — and climb before they realise it.
The exit. January 2020: the chairman and managing director of wind-energy giant Siemens Gamesa’s Indian arm resigns — and claims about ₹104 crore under his employment and incentive agreements. The company asks him to stay on through April while they part ways.
The world stops. 25 March 2020: a nationwide lockdown begins. Businesses freeze, payments freeze — and somewhere in Delhi, lawmakers begin drafting an emergency shield for companies about to drown in insolvency petitions.
The race. 28 April: the company sends him a termination letter. 30 April: he fires back a formal demand notice — naming, in the statutory form, 30 April 2020 as the date his dues went unpaid. On 11 May he files an insolvency petition. The shield law doesn’t exist yet. He looks safely inside the door.
The law changes mid-game. 5 June 2020: an Ordinance inserts Section 10A into the Code — no insolvency petitions for any default arising on or after 25 March 2020, for six months (later stretched to a year). And a proviso with teeth: for those defaults, no petition shall ever be filed.
The three escapes. He argues: first, I filed before 5 June — a new law can’t reach a case already in court; second, my “real” default was in January or March, before the cut-off; third, this claim has nothing to do with COVID anyway.
The verdict — all three fail. The bar runs on when the default happened, not when the petition was filed — otherwise everyone who rushed to court before 5 June would escape the very protection Parliament built. His own demand notice fixed the date: 30 April, inside the window. And no court will hold an inquest into whether COVID truly caused the default. Petition dead (9 February 2021).
Epilogue — the door closed, the debt lived. Section 10A never forgave a rupee: the ₹104-crore claim stayed alive for ordinary courts — only the insolvency weapon was taken away. The COVID window (25 March 2020 to 24 March 2021) is now permanent legal geography: any default dated inside it can never open the Code’s door — and every limitation and default-date fight since checks this map first.
Because the ban looks at the default, not the filing: Parliament barred petitions for any default arising on or after 25 March 2020 — and his own demand notice declared the default date as 30 April 2020, squarely inside the protected window.
The deeper logic: if filing early could beat the ban, every creditor who raced to court between 25 March and 5 June would strip companies of exactly the protection the lockdown law was built to give. The shield had to reach back to work at all.
A judgment is authority only for what it decides. Fix the questions before you read a single answer.
The reach-back: does s. 10A bar an application filed before 5 June 2020 (its date of birth), where the default arose after 25 March 2020 — is the bar retrospective?
The anchor: can the applicant escape by re-dating the default to before the cut-off, contrary to the date declared in his own Form 3 demand notice?
The causation escape: must the tribunal examine whether the default was actually caused by the COVID-19 pandemic before applying the bar?
Two layers, so you always know whose voice you are reading: Our reading is this page’s interpretation — we state it and we stand behind it. The Court is the judgment verbatim, para-numbered from the certified copy.
Our readingSection 10A is keyed to the date of default, not the date of filing. It catches applications already filed before 5 June 2020 — otherwise everyone who raced to court in the ten-week gap would strip debtors of the very protection Parliament built (Para 23).
Our readingThe default date declared in the Form 3 demand notice is the applicant’s anchor: having named 30 April 2020, he could not re-date the default to January or March to slip out of the window (Paras 9–10).
Our readingThe protection is class-wide and blunt by design: no tribunal is to investigate whether the pandemic actually caused the particular default. Parliament chose a date, not a causation test (Para 25).
Our readingSection 10A closes one door, not the claim: the debt is not extinguished and every ordinary recovery route — suit, arbitration, other fora — stays open (Para 24).
Our readingWhere text is ambiguous, purpose governs: the recitals of the Ordinance (lockdown, stressed businesses, missing resolution applicants) fix the meaning, and the initiation-versus-commencement distinction (ss. 5(11)–(12)) changes nothing. The NCLAT’s view stands; appeal dismissed (Paras 25–27).
1 · Read the law with its birth certificate. The Ordinance’s recitals — a lockdown “in force since 25th March, 2020”, businesses stressed “for reasons beyond their control”, resolution applicants nowhere to be found — are treated as the key to its meaning, on the authority of a Constitution Bench (Paras 15, 21).
2 · Tense is not destiny. “Shall be filed” sounds future-facing, but “the language of the provision is not always decisive” of prospectivity — the dominant legislative intention controls, and here the chosen cut-off (the lockdown date itself) tells you everything (Paras 21–22).
3 · Purpose completes the circle. A filing-date reading would create a perverse race: petitions rushed in before 5 June would defeat the shield precisely for the class it was made to protect. Purposive construction — anchored in Swiss Ribbons’ vision of the Code as a rescue statute — closes that gap (Paras 23, 25).
“It would leave a whole class of corporate debtors where the default has occurred on or after 25 March 2020 outside the pale of protection because the application was filed before 5 June 2020.” — Para 23: the single sentence that decided the case — and every s. 10A fight since.
We read the certified copy end to end so you don’t repeat what the summaries got wrong. Both findings are checkable by anyone with the PDF.
Wrong. The bar “does not extinguish the debt owed by the corporate debtor or the right of creditors to recover it”. Only the IBC door closed — suits, arbitration and every ordinary recovery route stayed open, and the ₹104-crore claim in this very case survived the dismissal.
The move: when a debtor waves s. 10A as a discharge, hand up Para 24 — the shield stops CIRP, nothing else. Advise the creditor client accordingly before limitation runs on the ordinary remedy.
✓ verified against certified copy · Para 24Wrong — in both directions. The tribunal holds no causation inquiry: the protection covers a default dated in the window even if COVID had nothing to do with it (as the appellant argued, in vain, of this ₹104-crore claim rooted in a January resignation) — and no creditor can defeat the bar by proving the debtor’s distress predated the pandemic.
The move: strike causation evidence as irrelevant — Para 25. The only triable fact is the date of default; spend every page there.
✓ verified against certified copy · Para 25A judgment is a tool with two edges. From the Bench you must see both — you will not always be on the same side of it.
Is it a CIRP application under s. 7, 9 or 10 against the corporate debtor?s. 10A opens “Notwithstanding anything contained in sections 7, 9 and 10” — it suspends only these
Did the default (as declared in the demand notice / petition) arise on or after 25 March 2020?the explanation keeps earlier defaults fully actionable (quoted at Para 6)
Does it also fall within the notified window (25.03.2020 up to 24.03.2021 as extended)?Para 16 — six months “or such further period, not exceeding one year”
Is the date you are relying on the same one disclosed in the Form 3 / petition?Para 10 — re-dating against your own disclosure is “plainly untenable”
Answer the four questions to see whether the s. 10A bar bites.