NCLT Petition Filing

NCLT Petition Filing under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) is the Adjudicating Authority for insolvency petitions filed under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 ("IBC"). This service covers preparation and filing of petitions for initiation of the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP).

Eligibility threshold: Under Section 4(1) of the IBC, read with Ministry of Corporate Affairs notification S.O. 1205(E) dated 24 March 2020, a CIRP petition can be admitted by the NCLT only where the minimum amount of default is ₹1 crore or more.

Categories of petition:

• Section 7 petition — filed by a financial creditor on occurrence of a default by the corporate debtor.


• Section 9 petition — filed by an operational creditor after serving a demand notice and the expiry of the statutory notice period without payment or a notice of dispute.


• Section 10 petition — filed by the corporate debtor itself seeking initiation of its own insolvency resolution.

Each petition category carries its own documentary requirements and evidentiary standard for proof of default, which our filing service prepares and presents before the NCLT bench having jurisdiction over the corporate debtor's registered office.

Note: the NCLT also exercises jurisdiction over other categories of corporate petitions beyond IBC insolvency matters (for example, matters under the Companies Act, 2013); this service, as scoped, covers IBC Section 7/9/10 petitions specifically. Where a matter falls under a different statute, the applicable provisions and thresholds will be confirmed and communicated separately before filing.

NCLT petitions cover the applications and the petitions before the National Company Law Tribunal under the Companies Act 2013 and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016 — the petitions for the oppression and the mismanagement under Sections 241 to 244, the schemes of arrangement under Sections 230 to 232, the winding up applications, the IBC applications under Sections 7, 9 and 10, and the appeals to the NCLAT under the statutes. The petition is the formal initiation of the company-law remedy, and its drafting and its filing are the difference between the remedy that proceeds and the application that is dismissed at the threshold.

The NCLT is the forum for the company disputes — the minority shareholder's complaint of the oppression and the mismanagement, the creditor's IBC application, the scheme of the arrangement, the winding up — and the petition is the document that frames the entire case. The grounds, the facts, the reliefs and the evidence must be pleaded to survive the preliminary scrutiny, and the procedure — the filing, the notices, the hearings — runs under the NCLT Rules and the statute.

The cost of a defective petition is the dismissal and the restart: the petition rejected at the admission for the mis-pleading, the relief that was never framed, the limitation that was missed — each a failure of the drafting that the case could not survive.

This service is for companies, shareholders, creditors and the parties with company-law remedies. We assess the grounds and the reliefs available under the statute, draft the petition with the facts, the grounds and the evidence, file it with the NCLT or the NCLAT, manage the procedure — the notices, the replies, the hearings — and support the proceedings to the final order.