The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), Delhi Bench upheld the rejection of application for initiation of corporate insolvency resolution process by operational creditor.
The Corporate Debtor, M/s. Masters India Pvt. Ltd. had approached the Appellant, Operational Creditor i.e. M/s. Micra Systems Pvt. Ltd. in October, 2016 for development of GST Portal and presentation of the same to GSTN for grant of License as GSP.
According to the Appellant, the Operational Creditor gave services to the Corporate Debtor on this count and Operational Creditor built solutions for the Corporate Debtor which continued till November, 2017.
In November, 2017, the Appellant had to discontinue the services on account of non-payment of pending bills and as there was breach of trust by the Corporate Debtor. There were regular payments made by the Corporate Debtor till June, 2017.
According to the Appellant, the Appellant started work on design and development of software and automation solution for Respondent at job-wise basis by mutual agreed remuneration of Rs. One Lakh per person per month.
The Appellant was sending invoices through e-mail at the end of the month.After July 2017, payments were infrequent and partial. The Appeal refers to some efforts made with regard to entering into formal agreement and exchange of draft in that regard.
According to the Appeal, Respondents sent various e-mails raising unfounded and unreasonable issues. The Appellant addressed those issues of the Respondent in various emails, vide emails.
According to the Appellant, thereafter the Corporate Debtor did not raise issues with regard to the invoices. According to the Appellant, demand was made to the Respondent on 04th November, 2017 and 17th November, 2017 to make the payments. After a lapse of five months, Respondent sent legal notice raising various issues which were raised earlier in email dated 15.08.2017along with other concocted and manufactured issues.
Appellant did not reply to the same as those issues had been settled. Respondent-Corporate Debtor did not go to any Court/Forum to follow up the legal notices. The Appeal claims that subsequently the Appellant sent demand notice under Section 8 of IBC on 22nd May, 2019. The Respondent replied vide reply June, 2019 repeating the same concocted and irrelevant allegations raised the legal notices.
The Appellant filed an Application under Section 7 of IBC. According to the Appellant, Rs. 88,37,700/- are debt outstanding and application has been wrongly dismissed.
The coram of Justice A.I.S. Cheema and Dr. Alok Srivastava noted that the Corporate Debtor raised various issues including that Operational Creditor failed to complete the project in time and whatever Operational Creditor worked-the project was found not working.
The tribunal found that there is already a pre-existing dispute between the parties with regard to services rendered. This being so, the submissions of the Learned Counsel for the Appellant that these disputes raised were concocted or that they were irrelevant cannot be decided in summary proceeding under Section 9 of IBC.
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