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Judgment
ORDER
These are 3 Company Appeals which have been preferred by the respective Appellants by putting a challenge to the Impugned Order dated 25.11.2019 as it has been passed in the respective Interlocutory Applications IA No.30 of 2019, IA No.29 of 2019 and IA No.331 of 2019 preferred by the Respondent in TA No.96/2021, TA No.97/2021 and TA No.98/2021 respectively. By virtue of the Impugned Order under challenge the National Company Law Tribunal, Kochi Bench has passed certain directions for the purpose of regulating the proceedings as it has contained in the operation portion of part of the order is extracted hereunder: -
23.“In the light of the above Judgment, it is very clear that when a question deciding limitation occurred, it cannot solely be decided as a question of ‘fact’ alone. We have to look into the contents and circumstances of the main petition and decide whether this can be decided based on facts alone or there involved a question of “fact and law”. After going through the main Company Petition and the pleadings in the IA, we are convinced that the main company petition does have a mixed question of “law and fact”. Therefore, the plea of the applicant that the Company Petition is barred by limitation is to be viewed as a mixed question of facts and law for which it is necessary to peruse the relevant facts and the law. The available records and preliminary submissions of both the parties reveal that involvement of mixed facts and law are inter-twined in this case. Therefore, the plea raised by the Applicant / Respondent No.7 in the Interlocutory Application that the Company Petition is barred by limitation is required to be examined only after looking into the averments made in the Company Petition and any affidavit filed in reply to the Company Petition. Even though we have issued Interim Order on 29.08.2019 and consequently the Applicant / Respondent No.7 filed the Interlocutory Application with the prayer to modify / clarify the said order and subsequently an Order dated 02.09.2019 was issued by this Tribunal on the said IA, we observe that the Applicant / Respondent No.7 has not offered their counter memo in the Company Petition till date.
24.We are therefore of the view that since limitation point is to be viewed from mixed question of law and fact, therefore at this preliminary stage it cannot be decided that the Company Petition is barred by limitation. However, this point of limitation can be examined at the time of final hearing.
26.The Applicant / Respondent No.7 is also directed to file their Counter memo with a copy of the same served to the Respondent / Petitioner No.1 within one month from the date of issue of this Order. Respondent / Petitioner No.1 may file his rejoinder, if any, before the next date fixed”.
When these Appeals were taken up for hearing at the admission stage by this Tribunal, the tribunal has passed an order on 28.09.2020 granting Interim protection by passed an Interim Order as under: -
28.09.2020: Heard the Learned Counsel for the Appellants and this Tribunal, at this stage, deems it fit and proper to stay the portion of the order dated 19.02.2020 in IA/31/KOB/2020 in CP/69/KOB/19 (Company Appeal (AT) No.84 of 2020), IA/32/KOB/2020 in CP/71/KOB/19 (Company Appeal (AT) No.85 of 2020) and in IA/33/KOB/2020 in CP/72/KOB/19 (Company Appeal (AT) No.86 of 2020) to the effect that “the 1st Respondent company is also directed to provide the video recording of the Board meeting held on 28th July, 2018 to the applicants in the form of a CD, within a week from the date of this order”.
The order dated 28.09.2020, finds place in the order sheet of TA (AT) No.60/2021 (Comp App (AT) No.84/2020).
In fact, the directions which have been issued since being exclusively procedural in nature, the counsel for the parties agree that these Appeals may be disposed of with the direction to the National Company Law Tribunal, Kochi Bench, to decide the respective Company Petitions within the period of 3 months in accordance with Law leaving all contentions open for the respective counsels for the parties to be agitated in the Company Petition.