12,000 cases filed with NCLT

New Delhi, March 25: As many as 12,000 cases have been filed since the implementation of the insolvency law and setting of National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), a senior government official said on Monday.

Asserting that the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) should be the last resort, Corporate Affairs Secretary Injeti Srinivas said the NCLT has been very expeditious in disposing cases related to insolvency.

"In some of the NCLTs, the number of cases filed and the number of cases disposed off are almost the same. That means you are almost current," he noted.

Cases under the code can Sensus, an arm of the USbased Xylem Inc, a leading water technology provider, is gearing up to tap the large Indian market with its smart water metering devices, said Amit Vaidya, Director-India, Strategic Customer Team-EMEA & APAC, Xylem.

Xylem helps customers worldwide to transport, treat, test and efficiently use water in public utility, residential, commercial and agricultural settings with presence in 150 countries. be taken up only after approval from the tribunal, which has benches in different parts of the country.

Srinivas said that personal insolvency should be approached carefully and in a planned manner.

"The issue of personal insolvency is an important dimension, which we have to address at the earliest.

"Today, we have approximately Rs 77 lakh crore as outstanding non-food credit. Out of this, industry accounts for about Rs 26 lakh crore and the services sector accounts for about Rs 21 lakh crore. These two put together accounts for Rs 48 lakh crore. It is 70 per cent of non-food credit outstanding. We are left with 30 per cent

The company, which sees

India as a strategic market and has been investing here for the last five years, is in talks with a number of civic bodies in different cities across the country. It is already collaborating with the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) to provide 2,75,000 which we need to now," Srinivas said.

According to him, there are two routes for personal insolvency — one is insolvency process followed by bankruptcy process and the second one is a fresh start.

A fresh start or a waiver or a waiver of a loan should be considered for debtors based on certain criteria such as income levels and assets, he said.

Speaking at a conference organised by industry body CII and British High Commission, Srinivas said that since the commencement of the Code and setting up of the NCLT, 12,000 cases have been filed.

"(Around) 4,500 cases have been settled before resolution address smart water meters in the first phase over three years. The scale of Pune implementation is large, comparable to anywhere in the world. The project will ensure accurate data on billing, identify customer side leaks, manage their network and help reduce non-revenue water. to a settlement amount of almost Rs 2 lakh crore. 1,500 cases have been admitted... 6,000 cases are waiting in queue," he added.

The IBC provides for timebound resolution of stressed assets.

To a query on long time taken in resolving certain cases under the IBC, Srinivas observed that it would not be fair to say that cases have been lingering on.

"May be these large cases have taken more than 270 days and some may be double of that but if you look at the size of that loan and the quantum of recovery, it is still an extraordinary sort of result.

A recent NITI Aayog report, that drew data from 24 of the 29 states in India, has predicted that India's water crisis is only going to get worse. Nearly 600 million Indians face high to extreme water stress and about 2 lakh people die every year due to inadequate access to safe water. Also, 21 cities are likely to run out of groundwater by 2020.

Water loss in India is estimated to be 40-50 per cent and Sensus is working towards bringing this down to 15 per cent over next couple of years, said Vaidya.