NCLAT rejects employees’ plea for access to CoC meetings
The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) has rejected an appeal by the employees of Corporate Debtor Sejal Glass Ltd to give access to the proceedings of the Committee of Creditors (CoC).
The employees of the corporate debtor had moved the NCLAT after the Mumbai Bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) had rejected a similar request on 28 September 2020.
Dismissing the emplyees’ plea of giving them access to CoC proceedings, the NCLAT said that the appellants in their capacity as operational creditors (employees are categorized as operational creditors) would have a limited interest to the extent of satisfaction of their claims which have been admitted by the resolution professional.
“Their role could not be enlarged. It is equally absurd to put the appellants at par with the erstwhile Board of Directors seeking information in regard to the resolution plans and the proceedings before the Committee of Creditors. Once the claims of the Appellants have been admitted, no role is ascribed to them in the deliberation of the Committee of Creditors,” said the NCLAT.
Sejal Glass is a Mumbai-based glass processing company which had a plant spread over 11,000 sq mts of area at Silvassa. It also has insurance brokerage and media and entertainment arm.
The insolvency application against the company was moved by Edelweiss ARC in February 2019. The company owes a total of Rs 137 crore to different creditors — Rs 113 crore to financial creditors ad 23 crore to operational creditors.
Employees of the company had claimed Rs 13.70 akh as outstanding towards them. However, the Resolution professional – Prashant Jain – did not accept their claims.
Most of the workers’ claims have been rejected due to incomplete or wrong forms filed by the employees.
