NCLT-approved proposal settles admitted creditor claims of ₹22,006.57 crore with ₹6.5 crore payout
The National Company Law Tribunal has approved a personal insolvency repayment plan under which Zee Group founder Subhash Chandra will pay ₹6.5 crore against admitted creditor claims of ₹22,006.57 crore. The decision means lenders would recover around 0.03% of their admitted claims, amounting to a haircut of nearly 99.97%.
The plan was cleared under Section 114 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. It followed a split verdict by the original NCLT bench; Judicial Member Nilesh Sharma, appointed as the third member, rejected creditor objections that the proposed recovery was too low to merit approval.
Vijay Mallya cites his own case
Reacting to the development, fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya referred to the settlement in a post on X and questioned the debt-recovery process in India.
“If True many congratulations to my friend Subhash. Banks and Government have admitted having recovered Rs 14,100 crores from me against a Judgement debt of Rs 6203 crores. Many more borrowers have settled at a fraction. Indian Debt Resolution Justice I presume. No media questions,” Mallya wrote.
Mallya’s remarks contrast the reported recovery in his own case with Chandra’s NCLT-approved plan. His claim regarding the ₹14,100 crore recovery was made in his post and has not been independently assessed in the tribunal’s order on Chandra’s insolvency case.
Congress attacks NCLT decision
The Congress also criticised the approval. Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said that when a debtor repays only a fraction of the dues, the difference is commonly described as a “haircut” in financial terms.
But, referring to the scale of the proposed recovery, he said, “This is not merely a haircut; it is indeed a mundan,” and argued that it makes a mockery of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016.
The order has renewed scrutiny of lender recoveries in personal insolvency cases. While the tribunal accepted the plan, the scale of the haircut has prompted questions from political leaders and business figures over how India’s debt-resolution framework treats different borrowers.
