Rajasthan Real Estate Regulatory Authority: A Coram of Nihal Chand Goel (Chairman) and Rakesh Jain (Member), rejected an application for staying the proceedings filed under Section 279 of the Companies Act, 2013.
In the present order, the Authority was dealing with ten cases taken together, all against the company MVL Ltd. having a common case. An application was filed under Section 279 of the Companies Act, 2013 on the behalf of the non-complainant company requesting that the proceedings be stayed as the High Court of Delhi had admitted a winding-up petition against the non-complainant company and had appointed a provisional liquidator.
The learned counsel, Harshal Tholia, filed a reply to the said application and brought the Authority’s attention to Section 279 of the Act which contained two clearly separate provisions, one for the fresh institution or commencement of a new suit or other legal proceeding, and the other for proceeding with an already pending suit or other legal proceeding.
The Authority observed that no pending suit or other legal proceedings can be proceeded with when a winding order is passed and hence the appointment of a provisional liquidator was of no consequence when it came to staying or not staying a pending suit or other legal proceedings. Only the winding up order was relevant for staying a pending suit or other legal proceedings. As the winding-up order had not been made by the court till that time, the stage for staying the proceedings had not arrived yet.
It was further noted that the proceedings were pending under the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 which was a special Act of the Parliament made much after the Companies Act, 2013. Referring to the Section 89 of the RERA Act, the Authority held that it prevailed over the Companies Act, 2013 and hence Section 279 of the Companies Act, 2013 did not come in the way of the Authority’s proceedings.
In view of the above, the application for staying the proceedings was rejected.[Kuldeep Kaur v. MVL Ltd., Complaint No. RAJ-RERA-C-2018-2127, decided on 09-05-2019]
