The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on Tuesday approved the Jalan Kalrock consortium’s resolution plan for bankrupt Jet Airways. 

The NLCT bench of Janab Mohhamed Ajmal and V Nallasenapathy, however, rejected the consortium’s demand for historicity of airport slots and traffic rights. The judges ruled that allocation of slots would be considered as and when those were applied for and historic slots would not be available. The consortium would have 90 days to seek all regulatory permissions and complete formalities for restarting the airline and could seek a further extension, if required. 

Jet Airways, which had suspended operations in April 2019, has been undergoing a resolution process under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC) for two years. In June 2019, the NCLT had admitted the insolvency petition against Jet Airways filed by the lenders’ consortium, led by State Bank of India. 

In October 2020, the Committee of Creditors (CoC) of the grounded airline had approved the resolution plan submitted by a consortium of the UK’s Kalrock Capital and the UAE-based entrepreneur Murari Lal Jalan. The Kalrock-Jalan consortium had won the bid last October to restart the airline by proposing nearly Rs 1,200 crore of payout to its creditors. 

The resolution professional had received claims of over Rs 44,000 crore from financial creditors and employees, of which claims to the tune of Rs 15,400 crore were admitted. Financial creditors, such as State Bank of India, Yes Bank and others, had claimed Rs 11,344 crore but claims worth only Rs 7,453 crore were admitted.