NCLT clears Subhash Chandra’s ₹6.5-crore plan against ₹22,006-crore claims

The National Company Law Tribunal has approved a repayment plan under which Zee Group founder Subhash Chandra will pay ₹6.5 crore against admitted claims of ₹22,006.57 crore in his personal insolvency. The recovery is about 0.03 percent. The haircut is about 99.97 percent.

Nilesh Sharma, sitting as a third judicial member, signed the approval under Section 114 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. The original two-member Delhi bench had split on the plan. The NCLT president added Sharma in February 2026 to decide only the points of disagreement. The file now goes back to the regular bench for implementation orders.

The case began as a personal guarantee claim by Indiabulls Housing Finance. Creditors voted on the plan in November 2024. It passed with 80.814 percent of the voting share. World Crest Advisors, Lemonade Capital Advisors, Corpcall Capital Advisors and Veena Investments were among those who voted yes. Objecting creditors held less than 20 percent.

LIC Housing Finance voted no. Its admitted claim is ₹1,322.39 crore. Under the plan it would receive ₹38,09,294, or about 0.028 percent. The objectors told the tribunal that a payout that small should not be blessed by a court. Sharma held that the tribunal’s job is not to replace the commercial judgment of the voting majority or to decide whether ₹6.5 crore is enough. Under Section 115 of the Code the approved plan binds all creditors, including those who voted against it.

The ₹6.5 crore bundle includes about ₹6.25 crore for creditors and ₹25 lakh for process costs. Sharma directed the resolution professional to issue a revised list of creditors after exclusions and to redistribute that sum among the remaining eligible names.

Personal insolvency of a promoter is a different machine from a corporate insolvency resolution. There is no company to sell and no incoming resolution applicant offering a going-concern bid. The estate is the individual’s disclosed assets. Chandra’s Delhi bungalow was separately reported as sold for ₹1,260 crore, a figure that sits in a different column from this ₹6.5 crore plan and is not the payout to these guarantee creditors.

For Indian lenders the order is a data point on how far a personal-guarantor haircut can go when the vote clears 80 percent. For the IBC it is a reminder that the Code treats a valid vote as the decision, and the tribunal as the body that records it. LICHFL’s ₹38 lakh on a ₹1,322-crore claim is the arithmetic that objectors wanted the court to reject. The third member declined.

Implementation still needs the regular bench. Until that order is signed, the 0.03 percent remains a majority opinion, not a completed payout.