NCLT Insolvency Cases: How AI Helps Track 90-Day CIRP Deadlines
· 7 min read · Case Study
With 78% of IBC cases exceeding mandated timelines, an insolvency practitioner uses AI matter management to track CoC meetings, claims, and resolution plan deadlines across 12 simultaneous CIRPs.
The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code was supposed to resolve corporate distress within 330 days. The reality, as any insolvency practitioner will tell you, is starkly different. With over 8,800 cases admitted to NCLT benches across India through December 2025, the average resolution time has ballooned to 744 days - more than double the statutory mandate. Seventy-eight percent of ongoing cases have already exceeded the 270-day mark that was meant to be the outer limit before the 2019 amendment extended it to 330 days.
Advocate Meera Krishnamurthy knows these numbers intimately. As a practicing insolvency professional registered with IBBI, she handles Corporate Insolvency Resolution Processes as both resolution professional and legal advisor to resolution professionals. At any given time, she is involved in 10 to 12 simultaneous CIRP matters across NCLT benches in Mumbai, Delhi, and Chennai.
"Each CIRP is its own universe," Meera explains from her office in Nariman Point. "It has its own timeline, its own Committee of Creditors, its own set of claims, its own resolution plans, and its own court dates. The IBC prescribes strict deadlines for every step - and missing any of them can result in the case being sent to liquidation, which destroys value for everyone."
The complexity of managing multiple CIRPs simultaneously is difficult to overstate. Consider what a single CIRP involves: public announcement within three days of appointment, claims submission deadline within 90 days of the insolvency commencement date, constitution of the Committee of Creditors, regular CoC meetings (typically every two weeks), invitation of resolution plans, evaluation of plans against Section 30(2) criteria, CoC voting, NCLT approval, and implementation. Each step has a deadline, and many deadlines are interdependent.
Now multiply that by twelve.
Before adopting AI-powered matter management, Meera's system was a combination of Excel spreadsheets, physical files, and a whiteboard in her office that tracked key dates for each matter. "I had a full-time assistant whose only job was to maintain the timeline tracker," she recalls. "And even then, things slipped. A CoC meeting would get rescheduled, and we would forget to update the downstream deadlines. A claim would come in at the last minute, and we would scramble to verify it before the deadline."
The consequences of missed deadlines in IBC proceedings are severe. If the resolution professional fails to invite resolution plans within the prescribed timeline, the NCLT can replace them. If CoC meetings are not held at required intervals, creditors lose confidence and the process stalls. If the overall timeline exceeds 330 days without an extension order, the company faces mandatory liquidation - often at a fraction of its going-concern value.
Meera started using Lysa for CIRP management in early 2026, initially for just three matters as a pilot. The system's matter management capabilities allowed her to create a structured timeline for each CIRP, with every statutory deadline mapped and tracked. But the real value emerged from the AI's ability to understand the interdependencies between deadlines and adjust downstream dates when upstream events changed.
"When a CoC meeting gets adjourned by two weeks, everything downstream shifts," Meera explains. "The deadline for resolution plan submission, the voting date, the NCLT filing - all of it moves. Previously, my assistant would manually recalculate every affected date. Now the system does it automatically and alerts me to any conflicts or compression in the timeline."
The system also tracks claim-related deadlines with precision. In a typical CIRP, the resolution professional receives anywhere from 50 to 500 claims from various creditors - financial creditors, operational creditors, workmen, and employees. Each claim must be verified within a prescribed period, and the creditor must be informed of acceptance or rejection with reasons. For her largest ongoing matter - a manufacturing company with 287 creditors - the AI tracks every claim's status, verification deadline, and communication requirement.
One specific incident crystallized the value of the system for Meera. In March 2026, she was handling a CIRP for a real estate company where the 330-day deadline was approaching. The CoC had approved a resolution plan, but the NCLT hearing for approval kept getting adjourned. The system flagged - 45 days before the deadline - that at the current rate of adjournments, the matter would exceed 330 days without an extension order. Meera immediately filed an application for extension under Section 12(3), which was granted. Without that early warning, the company might have been pushed into liquidation.
"In the old system, I would have realized the timeline pressure maybe two weeks before the deadline," she admits. "By then, getting an urgent hearing for an extension application would have been much harder. The AI gave me a six-week runway instead of a two-week panic."
The system now manages all twelve of her active CIRPs. For each matter, it maintains a comprehensive timeline with colour-coded urgency indicators. It generates weekly summary reports for each CoC, tracking progress against the overall timeline. It flags when statutory filings are due - the quarterly reports to IBBI, the progress reports to NCLT, the communication to creditors.
Meera has also found value in the document management aspect. Each CIRP generates hundreds of documents - claims, verification reports, CoC minutes, resolution plans, valuation reports, and court filings. Having these organized and searchable within each matter means she can pull up any document instantly during CoC meetings or NCLT hearings.
"The IBC was designed to be a time-bound process," Meera reflects. "The fact that 78% of cases exceed their timelines is not because the law is flawed - it is because the operational complexity of managing these processes overwhelms the professionals handling them. AI does not change the law or the courts. But it changes our ability to stay on top of every deadline, every requirement, every interdependency. And in IBC practice, staying on top of the process is half the battle."
For insolvency professionals watching their peers struggle with timeline management, Meera's advice is direct: "The cost of missing a CIRP deadline is measured in crores - the difference between resolution value and liquidation value. The cost of a system that prevents missed deadlines is trivial by comparison. The math is obvious."