The appeal was filed in the Supreme Court regarding the establishment of the CIRP costs, including fees to be paid to the Resolution Professional merely on an ad hoc basis. The matter was decided by a division bench of Justice A.S. Bopanna and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud. NCLT admitted the Corporate Debtor in the resolution process, in which CIRP was rescinded by NCLAT and sent back the matter to NCLT to determine the cost and fees of CIRP undergone by the RP, which is to be sustained by the Respondent bank. The amount decided by NCLT was Rs. 14,75,660. The respondent bank acknowledged the same and made a partial payment, leaving the payable balance amount of Rs. 9,08,993. RP approached NCLT for the payment of a balanced amount for which NCLT set the balance payment of Rs. 5,00,000 plus GST towards the fees of RP, and NCLAT upheld the same. The Appellant contended before the SC that the factual position was not inspected properly by the NCLT and simply granted an ad hoc amount of Rs 5,00,000 which was further affirmed by the NCLAT and declared as reasonable. It was claimed that there was an improper exercise of the jurisdiction and no proper thought had been given to the ground for the assertion and the numbers as accepted by the financial creditor. SC by relying on the judgment in Alok Kaushik vs. Bhuvaneshwari Ramanathan, and Regulation 34 (Resolution Professional Costs) of the CIRP Regulations, observed that even the appellant body NCLAT has also advanced in an ad hoc manner. It was concluded that both the orders of the Adjudicating Authority show the refusal of the proper exercise of the Jurisdiction. There is no basis to be found by the Court regarding the reasonableness of the payment of an amount of Rs. 5,00,000 together with expenses. Hence, the Court held the matter to NCLT for a new decision and set aside the NCLT and NCLAT orders.
