A bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud, along with Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, emphasized that Go First Airlines had already presented its arguments to a single judge of the Delhi High Court. Therefore, there was no reason to halt the ongoing proceedings before him.
The Supreme Court denied Go First Airlines’ appeal against the Delhi High Court’s order, which allowed aircraft lessors access to the planes leased to the airline.
The Division Bench of the High Court refused to interfere with the single-judge’s directives granting aircraft lessors access to the leased planes. The Supreme Court, considering that the High Court heard petitions on a daily basis, declined to hear the petition and instructed the petitioners to present their jurisdictional issues to the solitary judge.
The Supreme Court was dealing with a petition filed by Go First Airlines challenging a Delhi High Court Division Bench order that upheld the directives to grant aircraft lessors access to the airline’s aircraft.
On July 5, a single judge of the High Court issued an interim order granting aircraft lessors access to the planes they had leased to Go First Airlines. Additionally, the judge allowed the lessors to conduct maintenance on the aircraft.
Go First Airlines then contested this order before a Division Bench of the High Court, which declined to intervene but urged the single-judge to make a prompt decision.
The Division Bench modified one of the directives to permit Go First to carry out all aircraft, engine, and component maintenance.
Subsequently, Go First Airlines appealed this decision to the Supreme Court.
Several aircraft lessors had approached the High Court after the Directorate of Civil Aviation (DGCA) rejected their de-registration requests.
They argued that the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) did not have relevant provisions to deal with de-registration cases and that the bankruptcy tribunals did not have the authority to consider their arguments.
These applications were filed after Go First Airlines initiated the corporate insolvency resolution procedure under the IBC by approaching the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) in Delhi.
On May 10, the NCLT Delhi accepted the petition and declared a moratorium for the company. The court also directed the company’s suspended board of directors to work with the Interim Resolution Professional to prevent redundancies.
The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) upheld the NCLT’s decision to initiate insolvency proceedings in an order issued on May 22.
