Adjudicating Authority

One term, two tribunals

The Code does not create a new court for insolvency. It borrows two existing tribunals and gives each a defined territory, splitting the work by the nature of the debtor. Part II, which covers companies and limited liability partnerships, works through the National Company Law Tribunal; Part III, which covers individuals and partnership firms, works through the Debt Recovery Tribunal. That is why the Code defines the same phrase twice — once in Section 5(1) for Part II and once in Section 79(1) for Part III — and why a definition that mentions only the NCLT, however common in summaries of corporate insolvency, misstates the term.

Neither tribunal is a creature of the IBC, and neither is supervised by the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India. Each is constituted under its own statute — the Companies Act, 2013 for the NCLT, the 1993 Act for the DRT, as the Code's own definitions record — and the IBC simply assigns insolvency work to them.

Jurisdiction: the registered office, the guarantor rule, and the long arm of Section 60(5)

For a corporate debtor, the forum follows the registered office (Section 60(1)). Section 60(2) then deals with the case that would otherwise split one default across two courtrooms: where the company's CIRP or liquidation is pending before an NCLT, an application for the insolvency resolution, liquidation or bankruptcy of a corporate guarantor or personal guarantor of that company must be filed before the same NCLT, and any such guarantor proceeding already pending elsewhere stands transferred to it (Section 60(3)). For this purpose Section 60(4) vests the NCLT with all the powers of the DRT under Part III — so the guarantor's Part III process runs in the NCLT, with the tribunal wearing the DRT's powers. Section 179 opens with the words "subject to the provisions of section 60", which is the textual hinge: the DRT is the default forum for individuals, but a personal guarantor of a corporate debtor is pulled into the company's forum.

Once a case is inside, Section 60(5) gives the NCLT a deliberately wide residuary jurisdiction: it may entertain or dispose of any application or proceeding by or against the corporate debtor, any claim made by or against it — including claims by or against any of its subsidiaries situated in India — and any question of priorities or any question of law or facts arising out of or in relation to the insolvency resolution or liquidation proceedings. Section 179(2) gives the DRT the mirror-image jurisdiction for individual debtors. The design keeps every dispute that grows out of the insolvency in one forum, and Sections 63 and 180 complete it: no civil court may entertain a matter on which the NCLT/NCLAT or the DRT/DRAT has jurisdiction under the Code.

What the Authority actually does in a CIRP

It opens the door — or refuses to. Every CIRP begins with the Authority's admission order. It must admit or reject a financial creditor's, operational creditor's or corporate debtor's application within fourteen days of receiving it (Sections 7(5), 9(5) and 10(4)); on admission, Section 13 requires the same order to declare the moratorium, cause the public announcement inviting claims, and set the Interim Resolution Professional's appointment in motion. From that point the Authority steps back: the resolution professional runs the company and the process, and the Committee of Creditors makes the commercial decisions. The Authority is the referee, not a player.

It decides everything contested along the way. Interlocutory and interim applications, extension of the CIRP period, replacement disputes and the avoidance docket all come back to the Authority. The avoidance provisions are its orders to make: preferential transactions (Sections 43–44), undervalued transactions (Section 45), transactions defrauding creditors (Section 49), extortionate credit transactions (Section 50) and fraudulent or wrongful trading (Section 66), where it can order persons who knowingly carried on the business to defraud creditors to contribute to the corporate debtor's assets. It also guards its own doorway — a penalty of ₹1 lakh to ₹1 crore for initiating proceedings fraudulently or maliciously (Section 65) and, since 26 May 2026, ₹1 lakh to ₹2 crore for initiating a frivolous or vexatious proceeding under Part II (Section 64A).

It closes the case, one way or another. If the Committee of Creditors approves a resolution plan, the Authority checks it against Section 30(2) and approves or rejects it under Section 31 — an order it must now pass within thirty days of receiving the plan, recording reasons in writing if it takes longer (Section 31(2A)). Approval binds everyone, governments owed statutory dues included, and since the 2026 amendment the clean slate is statutory: claims from before approval that the plan does not provide for stand extinguished against the corporate debtor, while claims against promoters, erstwhile management and guarantors survive (Section 31(5)–(6)). If no compliant plan arrives, the Authority orders liquidation (Section 33) — but must first consider a Committee application, passed by 66%, to restore the CIRP for up to 120 days, a second chance available only once (Section 33(1A)–(1B)). And an admitted case can be withdrawn only with the Authority's permission, on the resolution professional's application backed by 90% of the Committee, never before the Committee is constituted or after plans have first been invited, with the Authority deciding within thirty days (Section 12A).

Appeals: NCLAT, then the Supreme Court — on law alone

There is no appeal to IBBI at any rung of this ladder, and no civil-court side door (Sections 63, 180). A party who thinks the Authority has erred goes up — to the appellate tribunal, and from there to the Supreme Court on law alone.

The Authority is not IBBI — correcting a common error

Boilerplate summaries of the Code sometimes say the Adjudicating Authority is "regulated by IBBI". It is not, and the confusion is worth unpicking because the two institutions do opposite kinds of work. IBBI is the sector's regulator: under Section 196 it registers and supervises the service providers — insolvency professionals, insolvency professional agencies, information utilities and registered valuers — frames the regulations the processes run under, and disciplines the professionals. The Adjudicating Authority is a tribunal: it hears the case in front of it and passes orders that bind the parties. IBBI does not hear insolvency cases, does not sit in appeal over the NCLT or DRT, and cannot direct how a case is decided; the Authority, for its part, does not register or regulate professionals — though the resolution professional who appears before it is an IBBI-regulated professional, and the Authority's plan-approval order sends the process record to IBBI's database (Section 31(3)(b)). Regulator and adjudicator are separate pillars of the same system.

The DRT half: on the statute book, mostly still waiting

One caution completes the picture. The Code was brought into force in stages (Section 1(3)), and the commencement note in the official text records that Part III's provisions — Sections 78, 79 and 94 to 187 among them — were brought into force on 1 December 2019 by Notification S.O. 4126(E) only in so far as they relate to personal guarantors to corporate debtors. For other individuals and partnership firms, Part III has not been brought into force on that text — so the DRT's role as Adjudicating Authority for ordinary individuals and firms, though fully written into Sections 79 and 179, is in practice still largely prospective; and even a personal guarantor's case, where it is tied to a corporate debtor's CIRP, is heard by the NCLT under Section 60 rather than by the DRT. In day-to-day practice, "the Adjudicating Authority" almost always means the NCLT — but the term itself covers both tribunals, and the DRT half is law, not error.

This page explains the Adjudicating Authority under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 for study and compliance reference, in the form in force after the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) Act, 2026 (in force from 26 May 2026), as recorded in the India Code text as on 2 July 2026. "Adjudicating Authority" is also a term used in other Indian statutes with different meanings; this page covers the IBC alone. It is not legal advice for a specific proceeding.