RDB Act Recovery Certificate After Borrower’s Death: Heirs, Attachment & Limitation

Recovery Certificates That Outlive the Borrower: OA and Recovery Officer Proceedings Under the RDB Act When the Defendant Has Died

Summary: Proceedings under the Recovery of Debts and Bankruptcy Act, 1993 can continue for many years after the borrower has died, making the interaction between the Original Application, Recovery Certificate, Recovery Officer proceedings and liability of legal representatives critically important. The Original Application stage is significant because Section 19 requires disclosure of secured and other assets and permits the Tribunal to direct further disclosure, while Section 26 prevents the Recovery Officer from reopening the correctness of the amount specified in the certificate. Where the borrower dies during the Original Application, the proceeding may survive because the claim concerns the estate, but the legal representatives must receive a meaningful opportunity to defend the estate; particular issues arise where a minor heir was never represented by a guardian. Once a Recovery Certificate is issued, Section 19(22A) gives it the character of a deemed decree for specified purposes, while Section 29 imports the Second and Third Schedules to the Income-tax Act and the Income-tax (Certificate Proceedings) Rules into recovery proceedings. Rules 84 and 85 are especially important after death: the certificate does not cease merely because the defaulter dies, but proceedings may continue against a legal representative where the death occurs after the certificate is drawn up, except arrest and detention. The liability of a legal representative remains confined to the deceased’s estate that has actually come into the representative’s hands. Remedies include objections under Rule 11, applications concerning sale under Rules 60 to 62, proceedings before the Presiding Officer under Sections 26 and 27, and the Section 30 appeal, for which the thirty-day period is critical and cannot ordinarily be extended by Section 5 of the Limitation Act.

Brief

A bank files an Original Application before a Debts Recovery Tribunal. The borrower contests it, or more often does not. A final order follows, and with it a Recovery Certificate. The file then goes quiet. Ten or twelve years later a notice of attachment arrives at a house that nobody connected with the loan — addressed to a man who died long ago, or to a son who was a schoolboy when the Original Application was filed. The family has never seen the Original Application, does not know what the certificate says, and has thirty non-extendable days to do something about it.

This article sets out the whole machinery in sequence — what happens at the Original Application stage, what a Recovery Certificate is and how long it lives, what powers the Recovery Officer actually exercises and under which rules, how a bank locates legal heirs and private properties, how far the liability of a legal representative extends, and what remedies exist with what time limits. It is written for the situation that arises most often and is written about least: recovery proceedings that continue for a decade or more after the person named in them has died.

Introduction

Practitioners write a great deal about the SARFAESI Act and almost nothing about the Recovery of Debts and Bankruptcy Act, 1993. That is a curious imbalance, because the RDB Act is the older and in some ways the harsher statute. SARFAESI proceeds against a secured asset; the RDB Act proceeds against the person and everything he owns. SARFAESI gives the borrower a securitisation application under Section 17 with a forty-five day window. The RDB Act gives him an appeal under Section 30 with a thirty-day window that cannot be extended by so much as a day.

The imbalance matters most in the long-running file. Under SARFAESI, enforcement tends to be quick or it is abandoned. Under the RDB Act, a Recovery Certificate can lie in a Recovery Officer’s office for years and then be revived by a single order of attachment. By then the borrower may be dead, the heirs scattered, the papers lost, and the family confronted with a figure that has grown in silence. What follows is an attempt to lay the whole sequence out plainly, provision by provision, so that the defences which exist — and several of them are good — are not discovered after they have expired.

Part I — The Original Application: What Is Decided, and What Is Lost

Proceedings begin with an application under Section 19(1) or 19(2) of the RDB Act. Much of what happens to the family a decade later is fixed at this stage, and understanding why requires reading Section 19 with some care.

By Section 19(3A) the applicant bank must specify in the application the assets over which security interest is created and, where those are insufficient, the other properties and assets of the defendant that it is aware of; and it may seek an order directing the defendant to disclose particulars of other properties or assets owned by him. Section 19(4) then requires the Tribunal, on receipt of the application, to issue summons directing the defendant to show cause within thirty days, to disclose particulars of properties or assets other than those specified by the applicant, and restraining him from dealing with or disposing of the secured assets and the properties so disclosed. The form of summons prescribed under the Debts Recovery Tribunal (Procedure) Rules, 1993 reproduces these directions almost verbatim and ties the disclosure to serial number 3A of the Original Application.

Section 19(4A) goes further. Notwithstanding Section 65A of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882, the defendant on service of summons is prohibited from transferring by sale, lease or otherwise, except in the ordinary course of business, any of the assets over which security interest is created or the other properties disclosed under Section 19(3A), without the prior approval of the Tribunal. Section 19(5) gives thirty days for the written statement, extendable in exceptional cases and for reasons recorded by not more than fifteen days. Section 19(13) and the provisions following it allow attachment before judgment where the Tribunal is satisfied that the defendant is about to dispose of property with intent to obstruct or delay execution, and Section 19(18) confers wide interlocutory powers, including the appointment of a commissioner.

Two consequences follow, and they are the reason this Part matters. First, the list of “private properties” that surfaces years later in an attachment order is very often not the product of any investigation at all. It is the list the defendant himself was compelled to file on affidavit at the Original Application stage, sitting in the record since the year it was filed. Secondly, Section 26 of the Act provides that it shall not be open to the defendant to dispute before the Recovery Officer the correctness of the amount specified in the certificate, and that no objection to the certificate on any other ground shall be entertained by the Recovery Officer. Everything about quantum, liability and the merits is therefore concluded at the Original Application stage and is unavailable afterwards. A family that ignored the summons in year one has, by the time the attachment lands in year twelve, lost every argument about whether the money was ever due.

Procedurally, Section 22 provides that the Tribunal and the Appellate Tribunal are not bound by the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 but are guided by the principles of natural justice, subject to the other provisions of the Act and of any rules; and that for the discharge of their functions they have the same powers as are vested in a civil court under the Code in respect of the matters enumerated in Section 22(2). Section 24 applies the Limitation Act, 1963 to an application made to the Tribunal. Section 19(20) provides for the final order, Section 19(22) for the issue of a certificate of recovery to the Recovery Officer, and Section 19(22A) declares that such a certificate shall be deemed to be a decree or order of the Court for the purposes there specified.

Part II — Death During the Original Application, and the Problem of the Minor Heir

Now take the case where the defendant dies while the Original Application is pending. Three questions arise, and they have to be kept separate.

The first is whether the proceeding survives at all. It does, because the claim is a money claim against the estate and the right to sue survives; a debt is not a personal cause of action that dies with the debtor. The second is whether the legal representatives must be brought on record. They must, because an adjudication that fixes liability on an estate without anybody present to defend it is not an adjudication at all. The third — and this is where the RDB Act creates a genuine difficulty — is what the consequence is of failing to bring them on record in time.

In a civil suit the answer is mechanical. Order XXII Rule 4 of the Code requires substitution of the legal representatives of a deceased defendant; Article 120 of the Limitation Act gives ninety days from the date of death; the suit abates automatically on the expiry of that period; and Article 121 gives a further sixty days to apply for setting aside the abatement. The Supreme Court restated the scheme in Om Prakash Gupta alias Lalloowa v. Satish Chandra, 2025 INSC 183, confirming that the outer time frame is a hundred and fifty days and that an application for substitution carries within it the prayer to set aside abatement. Order XXII Rule 10A places a duty on the deceased party’s pleader to inform the court of the death.

Before a Debts Recovery Tribunal the position is less tidy, because Section 22 says the Tribunal is not bound by the Code. That cuts both ways, and it is important not to over-read it in either direction. It does not mean that a Tribunal may pass an order against an estate that nobody has represented — Section 22 in the same breath requires the Tribunal to be guided by the principles of natural justice, and no principle is more basic than that a person affected by an order must have had an opportunity to be heard. Equally, it does not mean that a bank’s failure to substitute within ninety days automatically destroys the claim, because the mechanical abatement of Order XXII Rule 4 is a creature of the Code, and the Code does not bind the Tribunal. The practical result is that the Tribunal retains a discretion which a civil court does not have, and the family’s argument must be pitched not on abatement as an arithmetical rule but on the substance: that liability was fastened on the estate without the estate being heard.

Minor Heirs and Representation

The minor heir deserves separate treatment, because the point is much stronger than practitioners realise and is almost never taken. Where one of the legal representatives brought on record was a minor at the time, the question is not merely whether he was named but whether he was represented. In civil proceedings Order XXXII of the Code requires that a suit against a minor be instituted through a guardian appointed by the court for the suit, and a decree passed against a minor who was never so represented has always been treated as a nullity as against him, not as a mere irregularity. That requirement does not come from the drafting of the Code for its own sake; it exists because a minor cannot instruct counsel, cannot admit or deny, and cannot protect his share of an estate. It is, in other words, a rule of natural justice in procedural clothing, and Section 22 of the RDB Act directs the Tribunal to be guided by the principles of natural justice. A Tribunal which fastened liability on a minor without a guardian, or which allowed an adult co-defendant with a conflicting interest in the same estate to “represent” him, has not complied with Section 22 whatever the Code may or may not require.

There is a second limb to the minor’s position, and it addresses the objection that will certainly be made — that he is complaining twelve years too late. Section 6 of the Limitation Act, 1963 provides that where a person entitled to institute a suit or make an application is, at the time from which the prescribed period is to be reckoned, a minor, he may institute the suit or make the application within the same period after the disability has ceased. For an application which the heir himself is entitled to make — an objection, an application to set aside a sale, an application to the Presiding Officer — the argument that time ran against him while he was a child is not available to the bank. That is a matter to be pleaded expressly, with the date of birth proved, and not left to be inferred.

Part III — The Recovery Certificate: What It Is, and How Long It Lives

The certificate issued under Section 19(22) is the hinge of the whole statute, and three provisions define its character.

Section 19(22A) deems it to be a decree or order of the Court for the purposes of initiating winding up proceedings against a company or a limited liability partnership, or insolvency proceedings against an individual or a partnership firm. Section 26 makes it unimpeachable before the Recovery Officer on quantum or on any other ground. Section 27 preserves the power of the Presiding Officer — not the Recovery Officer — to grant time for payment, to stay proceedings under the certificate, and to amend or withdraw it; and Section 26(2) permits the Presiding Officer to withdraw the certificate or correct a clerical or arithmetical mistake in it. Section 31A separately allows the holder of a pre-2000 civil court decree to apply to the Tribunal for a certificate of recovery, which the Recovery Officer then executes as if it were a certificate under the Act.

Limitation for Enforcement of a Recovery Certificate

The question that matters in a twelve-year-old file is how long a Recovery Certificate can be enforced. In Tottempudi Salalith v. State Bank of India and Others, Civil Appeal No. 2348 of 2021, decided on 18 October 2023, a Bench of Aniruddha Bose and Vikram Nath, JJ. reasoned from Section 19(22A) that a recovery certificate under the 1993 Act is clothed with the character of a deemed decree, and recorded that the life of a decree for enforcement is twelve years under Article 136 of the Schedule to the Limitation Act, 1963. The Court had earlier held, in Dena Bank v. C. Shivakumar Reddy, (2021) 10 SCC 330, that once a claim fructifies into a final order and a certificate of recovery is issued, a fresh right accrues to the creditor to recover the amount specified in the certificate.

The practical significance is considerable and is routinely overlooked. If a Recovery Certificate is being enforced more than twelve years after it became enforceable, the argument that enforcement is barred by Article 136 is available and should be taken at the first opportunity — in the objection before the Recovery Officer and, if rejected, in the appeal under Section 30. It will be resisted, and the answer will be that steps taken within the twelve years keep the certificate alive; but the point has to be raised, because it is not one that any Tribunal will take for the family.

Part IV — The Recovery Officer’s Machinery, Rule by Rule

Section 25 sets out the modes: attachment and sale of the movable or immovable property of the defendant; taking possession of property over which security interest is created or any other property of the defendant, appointing a receiver for it and selling it; arrest of the defendant and his detention in prison; appointment of a receiver for management; and any other mode prescribed by the Central Government. Section 28 adds the garnishee-type power, by which the Recovery Officer may require any person from whom money is due to the defendant to pay it to him instead.

Section 29 is the provision that does the real work. It applies the provisions of the Second and Third Schedules to the Income-tax Act, 1961 and of the Income-tax (Certificate Proceedings) Rules, 1962, as far as possible and with necessary modifications, as if those provisions and rules referred to the amount of debt due under the RDB Act instead of income-tax. The consequence is that the certified amount is recovered as though it were an arrear of tax, and that a borrower defending a Recovery Officer’s action must litigate out of the Income-tax Act rather than out of Order XXI of the Code.

The Second Schedule repays close reading. Rule 2 requires a notice to the defaulter to pay the amount specified within fifteen days. Rule 4 sets out the modes of recovery. Rule 9 provides that every question arising between the Recovery Officer and the defaulter relating to execution of the certificate shall be determined by the Recovery Officer and not by suit, barring the civil court. Rule 10 exempts from attachment the property exempted under the proviso to Section 60(1) of the Code of Civil Procedure. Rule 11 is the machinery for investigating claims and objections by third parties to the attachment or sale, requiring the officer to investigate and decide on evidence. Rule 16 renders private alienation void in certain circumstances — once notice under Rule 2 has been served, or once property has been attached. Rule 48 effects attachment of immovable property by an order prohibiting the defaulter from transferring or charging it, Rules 49 to 51 deal with service and proclamation of the attachment, Rules 52 to 56 with the proclamation and conduct of sale, Rules 57 and 58 with the deposit by the purchaser, Rules 60 to 62 with applications to set aside the sale, Rule 63 with confirmation, and Rule 65 with the sale certificate. Rule 73 governs arrest and detention.

Rules 84 and 85: Death of the Defaulter

For the purposes of this article the two most important rules in the Schedule are Rules 84 and 85, and they must be read together and exactly. Rule 84 provides that no certificate shall cease to be in force by reason of the death of the defaulter. Rule 85 provides that if at any time after the certificate is drawn up the defaulter dies, the proceedings under the Schedule — except arrest and detention — may be continued against the legal representative of the defaulter, and that the provisions of the Schedule shall apply as if the legal representative were the defaulter.

Three things follow from that language, and each is worth pleading. The exclusion of arrest and detention is express: a legal representative can never be arrested under Rule 73 for the deceased’s debt, and a Recovery Officer who threatens it is acting without jurisdiction. The deeming provision is procedural, not substantive: it makes the Schedule apply to the representative as though he were the defaulter, but it does not enlarge his liability beyond the estate. And, most importantly, Rule 85 operates only where the death occurs after the certificate has been drawn up. Where the defaulter was already dead when the certificate came into existence, Rule 85 has nothing on which to operate, and the certificate itself — not merely a step taken under it — is a document issued against a legal non-entity. That distinction should be the first thing checked in any file where the dates are old.

Part V — How the Bank Finds the Heirs and the Private Properties

Families almost always assume that some investigative agency has been at work. Usually nothing of the kind has happened. The information comes from four ordinary sources, and knowing which one was used tells counsel where to attack.

Original Application Records

The first and largest source is the record of the Original Application itself. The disclosure compelled by Section 19(3A) and Section 19(4), filed on affidavit by the defendant during his lifetime, is a complete inventory of his unsecured properties, prepared by him, admitted by him and lying in the file. When an attachment order in year twelve lists a house that was never mortgaged, that is almost always where it came from.

Recovery Officer’s Powers

The second is the Recovery Officer’s own coercive powers. Under the Second Schedule the defaulter can be required to furnish particulars of his assets, and Rule 73 permits arrest where he dishonestly transfers, conceals or removes property or refuses to comply with directions regarding disclosure — a power that exists mainly to make disclosure happen rather than to be used. Section 28 permits the Recovery Officer to reach money owed to the defaulter by third parties, which is how bank accounts, rent, receivables and salary are located and frozen.

Public Records

The third is public record. Index II searches in the office of the Sub-Registrar reveal registered transactions in a name; revenue records, city survey extracts and property cards reveal holdings and mutations; municipal tax records reveal assessees; society records reveal members; and the Central Registry reveals registered security interests. None of this requires anything more than a clerk and an application fee.

Mutation Entries and Identification of Heirs

The fourth, where heirs are concerned, is the mutation entry. When a man dies, his heirs almost invariably apply to have the revenue or society records mutated in their names, because they cannot otherwise deal with the property. That entry is a public document which names the heirs, and it is the usual route by which a bank identifies legal representatives years after a death. There is a lesson in that for families, though it is an uncomfortable one: the very step that secures the inheritance is the step that identifies the person who will be served.

What the law requires, however, is more than a list of names. A legal representative brought on record must be shown to be one, and to be one in respect of the estate proceeded against. A bank that names four persons because a mutation entry names four persons, without establishing what each inherited, has not discharged that burden, and the point is a proper subject of objection.

Part VI — How Far Does the Liability of a Legal Representative Go?

This is the question every family asks first, and it has a clear answer that is worth stating without qualification: a legal representative is liable only to the extent of the estate of the deceased which has actually come into his hands. There is no personal liability beyond the inheritance. Everything else follows from that single proposition.

It means, first, that the secured property stands on a different footing from everything else. A mortgage or charge follows the property into whosever hands it goes, and an heir who inherits mortgaged property takes it subject to the mortgage. The bank does not need to establish personal liability to sell it; it needs only to establish the charge.

It means, secondly, that the deceased’s unsecured property — the house that was disclosed under Section 19(3A) but never mortgaged — is part of the estate and is available, but only as part of the estate and only to the extent of its value.

It means, thirdly — and this is the answer to the question with which most of these matters begin — that if the property does not fetch enough, the bank cannot simply move on to the heir’s own assets. Property which the heir acquired himself, or inherited from someone else, or held before the death, was never the deceased’s estate and cannot be attached for the deceased’s debt. An attachment of such property is not merely excessive; it is an attachment of the property of a person who is not the certificate debtor at all, and it is met by an objection under Rule 11 of the Second Schedule, which exists precisely to let a person who is not the defaulter establish that the property attached is not the defaulter’s.

A caution is necessary. Where the heir was also a co-borrower, a guarantor or a mortgagor in his own right — and in family borrowings this is very common — none of the above helps him. He is then liable in his own character, independently of the inheritance, and the whole of his property is exposed. The first document to read in any such file is therefore not the attachment order but the loan documentation, to see in what capacity each person signed.

Part VII — Remedies, and the Time Limits That Destroy Them

More of these matters are lost on limitation than on merits, and the reason is that the remedies are short, staggered and unfamiliar.

Objection Before the Recovery Officer

The first remedy is the objection to the Recovery Officer himself. Where the grievance is that the property attached does not belong to the certificate debtor, the route is Rule 11 of the Second Schedule, and the Recovery Officer is under a duty to investigate the claim and decide it on evidence rather than on submissions. Where the grievance concerns the sale, Rules 60, 61 and 62 provide for applications to set aside a sale — on deposit of the amount, on the ground of material irregularity or fraud in publishing or conducting it, and on the ground that the defaulter had no saleable interest — each with its own short period. Rule 63 provides for confirmation of the sale, and once confirmation has taken place the position becomes very much harder.

Appeal Under Section 30

The second remedy is the appeal under Section 30 of the Act, and it carries the single most dangerous time limit in this jurisdiction. Section 30(1), which opens with a non-obstante clause overriding Section 29, provides that any person aggrieved by an order of the Recovery Officer may, within thirty days from the date on which a copy of the order is issued to him, prefer an appeal to the Tribunal; and Section 30(2) empowers the Tribunal to confirm, modify or set aside the order made by the Recovery Officer in exercise of his powers under Sections 25 to 28. The non-obstante clause is useful in itself: it answers the argument that a particular order is made “conclusive” by the Second Schedule, because the appeal is given notwithstanding Section 29 and therefore notwithstanding anything in the Schedule which Section 29 applies.

But the thirty days are absolute. In International Asset Reconstruction Company of India Limited v. Official Liquidator of Aldrich Pharmaceuticals Limited, decided by the Supreme Court on 24 October 2017, it was held that Section 5 of the Limitation Act, 1963 is not available to condone delay in an appeal under Section 30(1), and that the prescribed period of thirty days cannot be extended. A family that spends six weeks looking for the old papers before consulting a lawyer has, on that authority, already lost the appeal. The practical instruction that follows is simple and should be given to every such client on the first day: apply for the certified copy immediately, record the date on which it is issued, and file within thirty days of that date whether or not the papers are complete.

Application to the Presiding Officer

The third remedy is the application to the Presiding Officer under Section 27, which is distinct from an appeal and is often forgotten. The Presiding Officer — and only the Presiding Officer — may grant time for payment, stay proceedings under the certificate, and amend or withdraw it; and under Section 26(2) may withdraw the certificate or correct a clerical or arithmetical mistake in it. Where the complaint is that the certificate itself names a dead man, or misdescribes the parties, this is the correct forum, because Section 26(1) shuts that argument out before the Recovery Officer.

Appeal to the Appellate Tribunal

The fourth is the appeal to the Appellate Tribunal under Section 20 against an order of the Tribunal, which carries the pre-deposit under Section 21. Practitioners should note the different bases and different windows applicable to appeals under the RDB Act and under the SARFAESI Act and should verify the current deposit requirement before advising, as the provisions have been amended more than once.

Rule 68B and Long-Delayed Sales

Finally, there is a genuinely unsettled question which is worth raising in any case where a sale follows an attachment after a long interval. Rule 68B of the Second Schedule prescribes a time limit for the sale of attached immovable property, reckoned from the end of the financial year in which the order giving rise to the demand became conclusive; the period was three years and was extended to seven years by the Finance Act, 2019 with effect from 1 September 2019, with a power in the Board to extend it further by not more than three years. Whether Rule 68B applies to proceedings under the RDB Act by force of Section 29 has been answered differently at different times by the Kerala High Court, one line holding that a sale conducted beyond the period is illegal and another holding that the rule has no mandatory application to recovery under the RDB Act. Since Section 29 applies the Schedule only “as far as possible and with necessary modifications”, the question is genuinely open, and where a sale is being conducted many years after the certificate the contention should be taken and the current position in the relevant High Court checked before the hearing.

What Is to Be Done

The order in which a file of this kind is examined determines which defences survive, so it is worth setting out.

Begin With the Dates

Begin with the dates, because they decide almost everything. The date of the Original Application. The date of the final order. The date of the Recovery Certificate. The date of death of the borrower. The date of the attachment. If the death precedes the certificate, Rule 85 does not apply and the certificate is open to attack at its root before the Presiding Officer under Sections 26(2) and 27. If more than twelve years have elapsed since the certificate became enforceable, the Article 136 contention discussed above is available. If the heir was a minor when the Original Application was pending, his date of birth must be proved and Section 6 of the Limitation Act pleaded.

Obtain the Original Application Record

Then obtain the Original Application record, not merely the attachment order. Inspection of the Tribunal record will show whether the deceased was ever served, whether legal representatives were brought on record and when, whether any guardian was appointed for a minor, and — critically — what disclosure of properties was filed under Section 19(3A) and Section 19(4). That affidavit is usually the source of the list of private properties, and reading it will often explain an attachment that otherwise appears inexplicable.

Identify the Capacity of Each Family Member

Then establish, document by document, in what capacity each surviving family member is being proceeded against. Borrower, co-borrower, guarantor, mortgagor and legal representative are five different characters carrying five different exposures, and a family that is told it is liable “jointly and severally” has usually not been told which of these applies to whom. Where a person is a legal representative and nothing more, the entire defence rests on the extent of the estate that actually devolved, and that must be proved with mutation entries, succession documents and valuations rather than asserted.

Act Within the Applicable Limitation Period

Then move, and move on the calendar rather than on the merits. A Rule 11 objection to the Recovery Officer where the property is not the estate’s. An appeal under Section 30 within thirty days of the issue of the copy of the order, because that period cannot be extended. An application to the Presiding Officer under Section 27 where the attack is on the certificate rather than on a step taken under it. An application to set aside a sale under Rules 60 to 62 before confirmation under Rule 63, because after confirmation the ground shifts sharply against the family.

Obtain the Recovery Certificate and Computation

And take one step that costs nothing and is almost never taken: ask, in writing, for the certified copy of the Recovery Certificate and for a statement of how the figure now demanded has been arrived at. Section 26 prevents the Recovery Officer from reopening the amount, but it does not entitle him to refuse to disclose what the certificate says. A certificate that names a dead man, or that has been enforced for more than twelve years, or that bears no relation to the sum now claimed, will not be identified by anyone else.

Cases Discussed

• Om Prakash Gupta alias Lalloowa v. Satish Chandra, 2025 INSC 183 — Supreme Court of India.
• Tottempudi Salalith v. State Bank of India and Others, Civil Appeal No. 2348 of 2021, decided 18 October 2023 — Supreme Court of India.
• Dena Bank (now Bank of Baroda) v. C. Shivakumar Reddy, (2021) 10 SCC 330 — Supreme Court of India.
• International Asset Reconstruction Company of India Limited v. Official Liquidator of Aldrich Pharmaceuticals Limited, decided 24 October 2017 — Supreme Court of India.

Closing

The RDB Act is not a badly drafted statute. It gives the borrower a full contest at the Original Application stage, a right of objection before the Recovery Officer, an appeal to the Tribunal against every order the Recovery Officer makes, a power in the Presiding Officer to stay, amend or withdraw the certificate, and an exemption from arrest for the legal representative of a dead debtor. What it does not give is time. The contest happens once, at the beginning, and everything afterwards is execution; and the windows for objecting to execution are measured in days, not months. Families come to this jurisdiction a decade late, at the point of attachment, and are then told that the arguments they most want to make were concluded years ago. The remaining arguments are narrower but they are real, and the single most useful thing a practitioner can do is to identify them within the first thirty days.

****

Author Information: Mihirkumar V. Patel is an independent advocate practising before the Gujarat High Court, Debts Recovery Tribunals-I and II and the City Civil Court at Ahmedabad, as well as the Debts Recovery Appellate Tribunal at Mumbai. His areas of practice include writ petitions under Article 226, direct and indirect tax litigation, arbitration, commercial litigation, land disputes, RERA, banking, the SARFAESI Act, the RDB Act and recovery disputes. The views expressed are personal and do not constitute legal advice concerning any particular facts. Readers should verify the prevailing statutory provisions and judicial precedents before acting on any proposition stated in the article. He may be contacted at [email protected].