A Bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu held that a litigant cannot be rendered remediless when e-filing is delayed by a fault at the tribunal's own registry, and set aside the NCLAT order dismissing the appeal as time-barred.
Bar & Bench reported that the Supreme Court recently held a litigant cannot be denied relief merely because an appeal was filed late owing to a fault on a tribunal or court's e-filing portal, in Regional Provident Fund Commissioner-II v. Ms Mamta Binani and Others. A Bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu made the observation in an insolvency matter in which an appeal reached the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal one day beyond the period prescribed under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. [1] [1]
According to the report, the case arose from approval of a resolution plan for Rolta India Limited by the Mumbai Bench of the National Company Law Tribunal in December 2025. The Regional Provident Fund Commissioner-II moved the NCLAT against that approval. Section 61(2) of the IBC ordinarily gives an aggrieved party 30 days to challenge an NCLT order, with the NCLAT permitted to allow an additional 15 days on sufficient cause, so the last date in this case was January 29, 2026. [1] [1] [1]
The report states that the RPFC first tried to e-file on January 28, but technical defects in the portal prevented it; a second attempt on January 29 drew a registry response that a backend problem was taking time to repair. The appeal was ultimately filed on January 30, one day late on record. On May 21, the NCLAT dismissed the appeal without examining the challenge, holding that it had no power to condone a delay beyond the 45-day maximum. [1] [1]
Bar & Bench reported that a May 6 report from the NCLAT Registry itself confirmed the RPFC had been trying since January 28, and that the Court agreed the tribunal could not condone delay beyond 45 days but found the delay was not attributable to the RPFC. The Court observed that the NCLAT could have excluded the period during which its e-filing system was not functioning, treating January 28 as the date of the appeal. It invoked the principle that an act of the court should prejudice no one and set aside the May 21 order, restoring the appeal along with the condonation application. [1] [1]
Research coverage limit: Only one source — a Bar & Bench news report of September 17, 2026 — describes the Supreme Court's September 10 ruling and its directions. The underlying judgment text and the Supreme Court's own order were not captured, so the ruling's reasoning is presented as reported and not independently corroborated.
Topic mismatch flagged for the checker: the discovery title concerned a Supreme Court restoration of an appeal filed one day late due to NCLAT portal failure. None of the primary documents captured — the NCLAT orders, the NCLAT daily orders, the NCLAT website pages, the Supreme Court judgments/orders, or the IBBI-hosted NCLAT orders — addresses this specific case or its holding.
The primary documents captured concern unrelated matters: an NCLAT order on refiling delay in an Envirant Developers insolvency appeal; an NCLAT order rejecting condonation of delay in appeals; a Supreme Court judgment in CA Ramchandra Dallaram Choudhary v. Adani Infrastructure & Developers (P) Ltd. on re-filing delay under Section 62 IBC; and Supreme Court orders on contempt and on delay in an appeal under Section 61 IBC. Their subject matter overlaps with limitation issues but not with the specific portal-failure holding described in the story.
Ambiguity: the report states the Bench made the observation 'recently' and refers to a 'September 10 ruling' without specifying the year; the article itself is dated September 17, 2026. The report does not set out the exact statutory or rules provision under which the Court acted, and the feedback's question about whether the Court relied on Section 5 of the Limitation Act, the NCLAT rules, or a different power cannot be answered on the captured evidence.
The report does not describe the specific portal failure in technical detail beyond references to defects and OTP delivery problems on attempts of January 28 and 29, 2026, nor does it set out directions to the NCLAT registry beyond the Court's observation that the period could have been excluded.
No evidence of disagreement was found in the captured material, but absence of disagreement does not establish consensus; this limitation should be read against the single-source nature of the reporting.
Some candidate sources were inaccessible or outside the supported research domains; consult the capture log.
[1] Bar & Bench · Litigant cannot be shown the door for NCLAT portal failure: Supreme Court restores appeal filed one day late ↗
17/9/2026 · Publisher reporting
[2] ibbi.gov.in · 26d911b63ae846025750b6ec9330e7f9.pdf ↗
Source date not supplied · Original document / statement
[3] nclat.nic.in · Daily Orders ↗
Source date not supplied · Original document / statement
[4] api.sci.gov.in · 5988_2026_4_22_71691_Judgement_01-Jun-2026.pdf ↗
Source date not supplied · Original document / statement
[5] nclat.nic.in · Home | National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) ↗
Source date not supplied · Original document / statement
[6] api.sci.gov.in · 5014_2025_7_46_64924_Order_10-Oct-2025.pdf ↗
Source date not supplied · Original document / statement
[7] api.sci.gov.in · 4355_2025_7_4_63973_Order_08-Sep-2025.pdf ↗
Source date not supplied · Original document / statement
[8] ibbi.gov.in · 72ea40b1a0cc3073ea140b2ca1df84ac.pdf ↗
Source date not supplied · Original document / statement
[9] nclat.nic.in · Sitemap | National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) ↗
Source date not supplied · Original document / statement
[10] nclat.nic.in · Help | National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) ↗
Source date not supplied · Original document / statement
[11] nclat.nic.in · About NCLAT | National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) ↗
Source date not supplied · Original document / statement
[12] nclat.nic.in · About Chairperson | National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) ↗
Source date not supplied · Original document / statement
Source records and any dated corrections accompany this article.
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