NCLT forms 5-member special bench to decide Zee founder Subhash Chandra’s Rs 22,006-crore repayment plan

Mumbai: The Delhi bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on Monday constituted a five-member special bench to resolve the deadlock over Zee founder Subhash Chandra's repayment plan, after concluding that a previous three-member panel failed to reach a majority verdict.

Essel Group chairman Chandra is the guarantor for the ₹22,006 crore borrowed by his various group companies. The dissenting creditors are objecting to the repayment plan proposed by Chandra. The settlement plan approved by a third member of tribunal last week included a payment of ₹1,494 crore by the principal borrowers and ₹6.25 crore by Chandra as personal guarantor to the borrowing.

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The new five-member bench comprises tribunal president Justice (retired) Anupinder Singh Grewal, judicial members Bachu Venkat Balaram Das and Mahendra Khandelwal, and technical members Atul Chaturvedi and Ravindra Chaturvedi.

"The Constitution of Bench is as per Section 419 (5) of the Companies Act, 2013," said a notification issued by the tribunal's registrar, Utkarsh Yadav. "The special bench will sit on September 1, 2026," said the notification.

Before the issuance of the notification, the division bench of judicial member Ashok Kumar Bhardwaj and a technical member Reena Sinha Puri referred the matter to the tribunal's president.

"The third member consciously passed an independent order. Thus, no majority view emerges. While the technical member rejected the plan, the judicial member confined the plan to those who accepted and approved it and accorded liberty to dissenting creditors to recover their debt," said the tribunal in its order.

Last week, the tribunal approved the repayment plan submitted by Chandra. The tribunal's judicial member, Nilesh Sharma, ruling as a third member, approved the plan under Section 114 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) and rejected the dissenting lenders' objections.

Earlier, the two members of the tribunal had given a split verdict, after which the president of the forum appointed Sharma as the third member.

The dissenting creditors in this case are LIC Housing Finance, HDFC Bank and Union Bank of India.

Commenting on the development, Chandra's office issued a statement saying the judgement by Sharma was also different. This means that there were three unique judgements and, hence, no ruling could be given, and the matter was referred to the tribunal's president. "Despite the above, we have complete faith and confidence in our judicial system," it said.

In the tribunal, as a dissenting creditor, LIC Housing Finance had argued that against "the admitted claim of approximately ₹22,006 crore, the repayment plan proposed payment of only ₹6.25 crore to the creditors".

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Gaurav Sethi, an independent counsel practising at the appellate tribunal and NCLT, said such an order constituting a five-member bench by the tribunal's president has been passed after taking cognisance of the orders of the original two members, who had delivered a split verdict.

"The original split verdict had suggested the availability of independent remedies for the dissenting creditors. Technically, a peculiar situation has now arisen, with three different views expressed by the members," said Sethi.