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Judgment
ORDER
The Appellant herein is an opposite party to the proceedings in the Company Petition No.12/2021, preferred by the Respondents/Petitioners, before the NCLT, Chennai Bench, being the proceedings, which have been drawn under Section 59 of the Companies Act, 2013. It is that during the pendency of the proceedings of the Company Petition, the Respondents/Petitioners had preferred an application praying for amending the relief clause by insertion of a relief, which has been sought for and extracted in the impugned order.
The amendment which was sought for by the Respondents/Petitioners was opposed by the Appellant herein by filing an objection on various grounds including that the nature of relief, which has been sought for could not be permissible by way of an amendment because the same would otherwise be barred by limitation and the amendment, which was sought for by the Respondents/Petitioners herein was after realizing the lacunas, subsequent to the filing of the Counter Affidavit by the Appellant in the principal proceedings.
Be that as it may, the law governing the field of inserting amendments in the petitions lays down certain specified restrictions where, the amendment will not be permitted to be carried out and wherever the amendments are permitted the relevant rules are very limited in their application. Further, not all amendments, which are permitted to be carried out including the nature of amendment which is the subject matter of instant Company Appeal will constitute a sufficient cause to invoke the Appellate provision under Section 421 of the Companies Act, 2013. There cannot be any iota of doubt that Section 421(1) of the Companies Act, 2013, as the appellate provision has been quite broad-based by using the word, “any aggrieved person” and “by any order”. The use of the word “Order”, by the legislature under Section 421, as per our opinion will only be that order, which when passed during the pendency of the proceedings, decides a material right of the parties and only such order would be amenable for challenging under Section 421 of the Companies Act, 2013. But in the instant case by virtue of the impugned order, Learned NCLT has merely permitted the amendment to be carried out and the lis is yet to be decided. All objections, which are to be taken by the Appellant, have been left open to be agitated, owing to the fact that the Learned Tribunal has already observed that the Appellant may file an additional reply to the amended prayer within the time period as specified therein in the impugned order.
Allowing of the said amendment does not deprive the Appellant of his rights, to put a contest to the relief sought for by way of an amendment, on merits. Since we are of the view that the nature of the order which is subjected to challenge under Section 421 of the Companies Act, 2013, in the instant Appeal, is more or less interlocutory in nature having been passed during the pendency of the principal proceedings to allow an application for amending the relief clause in the petition, it will not fall to be within the ambit of ‘order’ under Section 421(1) of the Companies Act, 2013. Particularly, owing to the fact that all contentions are still left open for the Appellant to be raised before the Learned NCLT. Accordingly, we decline to exercise our Appellate Jurisdiction in entertaining the instant appeal against the Impugned Order. The Appeal would stand dismissed without prejudice to the rights of the Appellant being left open to raise all contentions relating to the question of fact and law before the Learned NCLT, as against the relief sought by Respondents/Petitioners which has been incorporated by way of the amendment.