Insolvency Threshold For Transferred Cases Depends On Filing Date, Not Transfer Date: NCLT Bengaluru

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) at Bengaluru has recently held that winding-up and insolvency cases transferred from High Courts continue to be governed by the monetary threshold that applied when they were first filed, and not by the higher limits introduced later.

The tribunal made this ruling in a dispute between logistics firm Schenker India Private Limited and Lapp India Private Limited.

A coram of Judicial Member Sunil Kumar Aggarwal and Technical Member Radhakrishna Sreepada rejected Lapp's objection to the maintainability of the case.

The tribunal observed, “It is incorrect to contend that the petition has to be treated as a fresh petition and the monetary limits as on today need to be applied to determine the maintainability of the petition. Since the Petition was filed in 2014 before the Hon'ble High Court and the monetary threshold at the time of introduction of the IBC, 2016, was only one lakh, the petition on which certain proceedings had already commenced in the Hon'ble High Court and subsequently transferred to NCLT in 2024, the threshold as in 2016 is applicable, and consequently, we hold that the petition under consideration now is maintainable.”

The dispute goes back to 2014. Schenker India, a logistics services provider and an Indian subsidiary of DB Schenker, the transportation and logistics arm of the global Deutsche Bahn Group, had moved the Karnataka High Court seeking winding up of Lapp India over unpaid warehousing and logistics invoices.

The dues related to services provided during 2012–13 amounted to about Rs 15.74 lakh. The matter saw several hearings and was even sent for mediation before it was transferred to the NCLT following the coming into force of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code and the notifications dealing with the transfer of pending winding-up cases.

Lapp India, which is the Indian arm of the Germany-headquartered Lapp Group and is engaged in manufacturing and supplying industrial cables, cable harnesses, and connectivity solutions for sectors such as automation, machinery, energy, and infrastructure, argued that the case could not proceed before the NCLT.

It said that since the petition was assigned a transferred petition number in 2024, it should be treated as a fresh claim. Relying on the March 2020 notification that raised the minimum default threshold under the IBC to Rs 1 crore, Lapp contended that the tribunal lacked pecuniary jurisdiction because the claimed default was far below the current limit.

Schenker India opposed this, arguing that the case was a continuation of its 2014 plea and that applying the 2020 threshold could not be applied retrospectively here especially when the IBC threshold in 2016 was only Rs 1 lakh.

Rejecting Lapp's stand, the tribunal noted that the petition had already seen substantive progress before the High Court, including mediation and hearings. The tribunal observed that the case was filed well before the IBC came into force and years before the threshold was increased to Rs 1 crore.

It consequently held  that since the petition was filed in 2014 and the applicable threshold at the time of the IBC's introduction in 2016 was only Rs 1 lakh, the petition remained maintainable. The application challenging jurisdiction was dismissed, and the main insolvency petition is now listed for hearing on February 16, 2026.

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