Insolvency Reforms: A New Dataset for India's Insolvency Cases

Abstract

The legal framework for insolvency resolution in India underwent a structural change when the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC) was passed in May 2016. Once the provisions relating to corporate insolvency were notified (November 2016), the first cases of insolvency started being admitted in the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), the quasi-judicial tribunal vested with adjudication powers under the IBC. The final orders on these cases became the first public records of India's new insolvency framework. In a recent working paper titled Watching India's insolvency reforms: a new dataset of insolvency cases, we introduce a new dataset of all final orders passed by the NCLT and the appellate forum, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) under the IBC. In the paper, we also illustratively apply the data to answer questions about the economic impact of the IBC and the functioning of the judiciary under it. This article presents some summary statistics on the IBC and our preliminary findings relating to the working of the IBC.