Perils Of Judicial Metaphors

By Every judge knows that difficult cases occasionally tempt colourful language. A striking metaphor can illuminate a legal principle, make a judgment memorable and sometimes even explain a complex doctrine more clearly than pages of reasoning. But there is also a danger. A metaphor is a servant of reasoning, not a substitute for it. And when the metaphor begins to drive the reasoning, it is worth asking whether the law has quietly taken a back seat.

The recent decision of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) in Value Wise Consultancy Private Limited v. Deputy Director, Directorate of Enforcement & others [2026 LLBiz NCLAT 261] provides an interesting illustration. The conclusion reached by the Tribunal is, in many respects, unsurprising. What makes the judgment interesting is not where it ends, but how it gets there.

The judgment contains one of the more unusual metaphors to find its way into insolvency jurisprudence. The Ganges is not a river one normally expects to encounter while reading the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). But the metaphor is not just a decorative one. It performs an important role in the Tribunal's reasoning. Describing the Code as not being intended to create a “holy Ganges” capable of washing away criminality, the Tribunal cautions against insolvency becoming a camouflage for ill-gotten wealth and contrasts the interests of creditors with what it describes as “national interest.” The metaphor is vivid and memorable.

There is, of course, nothing objectionable about the use of metaphors in judicial writing. Quite the contrary. A well-chosen metaphor can illuminate a difficult legal concept far more effectively than a dense recital of statutory provisions. Many of us who have written judgments have occasionally reached for one. The difficulty arises only when the metaphor begins to carry the reasoning rather than illustrate it. That is the question which Value Wise invites us to consider.

To understand why the Tribunal reached for such vivid imagery, one must first look at the controversy before it. Like many disputes at the intersection of the IBC and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA), the facts themselves were not particularly remarkable. The legal issue, however, proved more interesting than the facts. Before the commencement of the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP), the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had provisionally attached certain assets of the Corporate Debtor under the PMLA. The attachment was later confirmed by the Adjudicating Authority constituted under that statute. During the moratorium under section 14 of the IBC, the ED also withdrew more than ₹2.29 crore from the Corporate Debtor's bank account. Following the failure of the CIRP and the company's entry into liquidation, the liquidator questioned not merely the attachment of assets, but also the withdrawal of funds and the ED's directions preventing the Corporate Debtor's customers from releasing the outstanding receivables.

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) declined to entertain the challenge, holding that the dispute belonged within the adjudicatory framework established under the PMLA. The NCLAT agreed. None of that is particularly startling. By now, the limits of the insolvency Tribunal's jurisdiction have been fairly well mapped by the Supreme Court. If Value Wise is likely to be remembered, it will not be because of that conclusion. It will be remembered because of the language the Tribunal employed in reaching it.

Judgments, like good advocacy, often borrow from metaphor. Some of the most enduring judicial metaphors have survived long after the cases themselves have faded into obscurity. They endure because they illuminate a legal principle. Occasionally, however, a good metaphor begins to do something more. It starts nudging the reasoning in a particular direction.

Perhaps that is what makes Value Wise so interesting.

Once the Tribunal characterises the IBC as not being intended to become a “holy Ganges” washing away criminality, the reader instinctively begins to view the dispute through that prism. It also raises another question. Is the metaphor merely illustrating the conclusion, or has it quietly become part of the reasoning by which the conclusion is reached? That is not an easy question.

Judicial writing is as much an exercise in persuasion as in exposition. A reader is seldom persuaded by a chain of propositions alone. The language matters. It shapes the way the reader approaches the legal issue even before the analysis is complete. For that reason, memorable metaphors deserve close attention. They often reveal not merely how a court explains its conclusions, but also how it has come to see the problem itself.

There is another reason why the language of a judgment deserves attention. A judgment does much more than decide the dispute before the court. It also teaches. Lawyers cite it. Judges rely upon it. Students learn from it. Its language gradually enters the law's vocabulary.

That is why the language used in Value Wise deserves closer attention. A memorable phrase is never merely memorable. Once it enters legal discourse, it has a tendency to simplify the legal proposition it represents. That is often its strength. And just occasionally, it is also its danger.

The question is not whether the metaphor is attractive. It undoubtedly is. The question is whether it remains an illustration of the Tribunal's reasoning or gradually becomes part of the reasoning itself. The answer, I think, lies in looking carefully at what the Tribunal was actually called upon to decide.

The liquidator was not inviting the insolvency Tribunal to pronounce upon the guilt or innocence of anyone accused of money laundering. Nor was the Tribunal sitting in appeal over the powers exercised by the ED under the PMLA. The issue before it was considerably narrower. It was whether the disputes raised by the liquidator belonged within the jurisdiction conferred upon the NCLT by the IBC, or whether they had to be pursued within the statutory framework established under the PMLA.

That distinction is important because it tells us what the judgment really had to decide. Once the issue is identified in those terms, the inquiry becomes one of jurisdiction rather than morality. The Tribunal was required to ask where Parliament had located the forum for deciding those questions. It was not required to decide whether the objects of the PMLA were more compelling than those of the IBC, nor whether one statute embodied a higher public purpose than the other.

Read in that light, the conclusion ultimately reached by the NCLAT is not especially difficult to understand. The Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasised that the jurisdiction conferred upon the NCLT under section 60(5) of the Code, though wide, is not without limits. A specialised Tribunal exercising jurisdiction under one statute cannot ordinarily assume supervisory authority over proceedings conducted under another merely because those proceedings have commercial consequences for the Corporate Debtor. Had the judgment rested there, it would probably have taken its rightful place alongside the existing line of authority without attracting particular attention.

Instead, the judgment chooses a different route. It invokes the imagery of the “holy Ganges,” contrasts the interests of creditors with “national interest,” and warns against the insolvency process becoming a camouflage for ill-gotten wealth. They reflect an entirely understandable anxiety that insolvency law should never become an accidental refuge for criminality. The question here is a different one: did the reasoning really need the metaphor?

A striking metaphor is often irresistible because it simplifies a difficult problem. The law, however, is not always simple. Statutory interpretation frequently requires courts to resist answers that appear immediately attractive and instead remain faithful to the discipline imposed by the text. The shortest path to a conclusion is not always the soundest one.

For that reason, judges should occasionally distrust their own best phrases.

None of this is to suggest that the NCLAT reached the wrong conclusion in Value Wise. Reasonable lawyers may differ on that. The more enduring question raised by the judgment lies elsewhere. It is whether, in explaining why it reached that conclusion, the Tribunal allowed a powerful metaphor to do more work than the law itself required.

Every judge who has ever written a reserved judgment will recognise that temptation. Somewhere during the drafting process, a sentence appears that seems to capture the entire dispute in a single image. It is satisfying because it promises clarity. Sometimes it genuinely provides it. Occasionally, however, the elegance of the expression conceals the fact that the real work still has to be done by the statute.

Perhaps that is the quiet lesson of Value Wise. Judicial metaphors are among the finest tools available to a judge. They illuminate, persuade and make the law accessible. But like every powerful tool, they demand restraint. Their proper role is to explain the reasoning, never to become the reasoning itself. That distinction is easy to state, but remarkably difficult to maintain.

Now, that is judicial craft.