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2023 (8) TMI 1292 - NATIONAL COMPANY LAW APPELLATE TRIBUNAL , CHENNAIMaintainability of petition - initiation of CIRP - Operational Creditors - Tripartite Settlement or not - Power of Attorney executed in ‘China’ and after the execution, was received in India - applicability of Indian Stamp Act - HELD THAT:- The ‘Power of Attorney Document’, was not executed in the Stamp Papers of the Law of the Land (India), but the said Stamp Paper, was purchased in ‘India’, and prefaced, with the document. Viewed in that perspective, this ‘Tribunal’, unhesitatingly, comes to a clear cut conclusion that the ‘Power of Attorney Document’, projected before the ‘Adjudicating Authority’ / ‘Tribunal’, by the ‘Appellant / Petitioner / Operational Creditor’, is an ‘invalid’ and ‘unenforceable’ one, keeping in view of ‘Non-compliance’ of the necessary ingredients of the Indian Stamp Act, 1899. It is to be remembered that an insufficiently stamped ‘Original Document’ or an ‘Unstamped Document’, can be ‘impounded’, and on behalf of the ‘Appellant / Petitioner’, before the ‘Adjudicating Authority’ / ‘Tribunal’, a photocopy of the ‘Instrument / Document’, was projected and hence this ‘Tribunal’, safely and securely holds that the ‘Non-compliance’ of the ingredients of the ‘Indian Stamp Act, 1899’, the ‘Kerala Stamp Act, 1959’, result in these documents not to be enforceable in ‘Law’. One cannot brush aside, a ‘primordial fact’ that in the instant case, the main CP (IB) / 45 / KOB / 2022, before the ‘Adjudicating Authority’ / ‘Tribunal’ (filed by the ‘Appellant / Petitioner’) is founded upon the ‘Non Payment’, as per the ‘Settlement Agreement’ dated 16.07.2020. Although, in the ‘Settlement Agreement’, the Respondent / Corporate Debtor, was described as ‘Confirming Party’, the Respondent / Corporate Debtor, had specifically guaranteed to pay the ‘Appellant / Petitioner / Operational Creditor’, if the ‘Second Party’ commits ‘Default’ on the ‘Loan Obligation’ and ‘Instalment’. The real ‘Date of Default’, fell during the ‘Suspended Period’, to initiate the ‘CIRP Proceedings’, against the concerned, under the ‘I & B Code, 2016’. Taking note of the facts and circumstances of the instant case, in an integral manner, comes to an ‘inevitable’, ‘irresistible’ and ‘inescapable’ conclusion that the ‘impugned order’ passed by the ‘Adjudicating Authority’ (‘National Company Law Tribunal’, Kochi Bench), in ‘dismissing’ the ‘Section 9 Petition’, preferred by the ‘Appellant / Petitioner / Operational Creditor’, does not suffer from any material irregularity or patent illegality in the ‘eye of Law’ - Appeal dismissed.
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