Senior Advocate Sanjiv Sen: Criticizes Government Over NCLT Problems

Senior Advocate Sanjiv Sen has criticised the Central government for not being proactive in addressing institutional and infrastructural problems confronting the National Company Law Tribunals (NCLTs).Sen has an extensive commercial law practice, with particular experience in company law, insolvency, taxation and arbitration. He regularly appears before the Supreme Court, High Courts, the NCLT and the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT). His insolvency practice has included significant matters involving Jaypee Infratech, Essar Steel and Bhushan Power and Steel.In an interview with Bar & Bench's SN Thyagarajan on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), Sen discussed the functioning of the NCLTs and the NCLAT, delays in insolvency proceedings and the treatment of operational creditors.Edited excerpts follow.SN Thyagarajan (SNT): It has been a decade since the NCLT and NCLAT came into being. How do you assess their performance? Have they created an effective tribunal system?Sanjiv Sen (SS): Speaking personally, I feel that tribunalisation of justice is something I am against in an ideal situation. Ideally, High Courts should hear all matters, including commercial matters, tax matters and the other matters that have been assigned to tribunals. But the High Courts have their own problems. The combined pendency in the High Courts and subordinate courts is more than 5 crore cases. It has been assessed that at the current ra