How to E-File a First Petition Before the NCLT in 2026

Vikrant D. Shetty

Aug 24

14 min read

Updated: Aug 26

How to E-File a First Petition Before the NCLT in 2026

Filing a first petition before the National Company Law Tribunal (the NCLT) requires registering on the e-filing portal at efiling.nclt.gov.in and submitting documents in PDF/A format, digitally signed, under the mandatory pre-requisites effective from 1 January 2024. Petitions are frequently returned not for want of merit but for defects in formatting, pagination or the verifying affidavit under Rule 34(4) of the National Company Law Tribunal Rules, 2016. The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) Act, 2026 adds an enabling power for a future unified portal, though none has yet been notified. This post walks through registration, bench and form selection, the paper book, fees and the defect clock.

Registration, Digital Signatures and the Pre-Requisites Introduced in December 2023

Creating the Account, and Why It Takes Longer Than Expected

Filing runs through the e-filing portal of the National Company Law Tribunal (the NCLT) at efiling.nclt.gov.in, and registration is the first bottleneck. The portal requires a user type to be chosen from a fixed list covering individual, advocate, chartered accountant, company secretary, cost accountant, Registrar of Companies, Regional Director, official or provisional liquidator, interim resolution professional or resolution professional, central and state government agency representatives, and a residual category. Each type calls for the matching registration number: the Bar Council enrolment number for an advocate, the ICSI number for a company secretary, the ICAI number for a chartered accountant. An individual may use a government-issued identity number.

Registration is completed by verifying mobile number and email address through a one-time password and uploading an identity document, after which the system issues a password that must be changed on first login. Anyone who will be named as a representative on the filing needs an account of their own before the case is created, because the portal builds the representative list only from users already registered on it. Opening accounts in the week the limitation period expires is a familiar and entirely avoidable mistake.

PDF/A, Bookmarking and the Order of 22 December 2023

The formatting requirements come from an NCLT order dated 22 December 2023 (File No. 25/02/2023-NCLT), issued in continuation of earlier orders of 29 August 2023 and 1 September 2023 whose operation had been kept in abeyance. It directs all litigants, advocates and parties to follow the mandatory pre-requisites for e-filing with effect from 1 January 2024, covering formatting, bookmarking of petitions, applications, pleadings and documents, electronic signature and retention of originals.

Two elements carry the most weight. Documents must be filed in PDF/A, the archival variant of the format rather than an ordinary export, and the file must then be electronically signed using a digital signature certificate issued by a certifying authority. The order recorded that an e-sign facility based on Aadhaar authentication would be made available in due course as an alternative to a digital signature certificate. Bookmarking has to follow the master index rather than be applied at random, and originals of documents filed electronically must be retained for production when called for.

Bench, Module and Form: Three Choices Made in the First Ten Minutes

Which NCLT Bench Has Jurisdiction Over the Filing?

Territorial jurisdiction follows the registered office of the company. Benches sit at New Delhi, including the Principal Bench, and at Ahmedabad, Allahabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Mumbai, with further benches later established at Cuttack, Jaipur, Kochi, Amaravati and Indore. Verify the registered office against the master data on the Ministry of Corporate Affairs portal rather than against the address printed on invoices. A company that has shifted its registered office without updating its stationery is a routine reason for a filing to be returned.

The Companies Act Module, the IBC Module and the Right Form

The portal splits filings into two streams at the outset: matters under the Companies Act, 2013 and matters under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (the Code). Choose the wrong stream and the checklist, the fee and the mandatory fields are all wrong. Within the stream, the basic details screen asks for case type, case title, bench, the provision under which the matter is filed and the respondent's particulars, and it generates a reference number as soon as it is saved. Where the case type is anything other than a main company petition, the portal asks which main case the application belongs to.

For an application to initiate a corporate insolvency resolution process the form comes from the Insolvency and Bankruptcy (Application to Adjudicating Authority) Rules, 2016 (the AAA Rules): Form 1 for a financial creditor under rule 4, Form 5 for an operational creditor under rule 6, and Form 6 for a corporate applicant under rule 7. Filings under sections 7 and 10 additionally require the interim resolution professional's details on the portal, so the written communication in Form 2 and the eligibility certificate need to be in hand before the filing is begun rather than assembled afterwards.

Building the Paper Book: Pagination, Index and the Affidavit

The Formatting Rules the Registry Actually Checks

Rule 20 of the National Company Law Tribunal Rules, 2016 (the NCLT Rules) is more prescriptive than many practitioners realise. Pleadings must be in English or accompanied by an English translation, typed in double spacing on one side, with an inner margin of about four centimetres at the top, a right margin of 2.5 centimetres and a left margin of five centimetres, duly paginated, indexed and stitched together in paper book form. The cause title must state that the matter is before the National Company Law Tribunal, specify the bench, and identify the order or proceeding against which it is preferred. Paragraphs are numbered consecutively, and the provision under which the matter is filed is stated immediately after the cause title.

Rule 22 requires every interlineation, erasure, correction or deletion to be initialled by the party or the representative presenting the document. Rule 23(3) requires an index in triplicate setting out the details of each document and the fee paid on it. Rule 27 requires a document in any other language to carry a translation certified in the manner it prescribes. None of this is decorative, and pagination that does not agree with the index is among the objections raised most often.

Verification, Form NCLT-6 and the Affidavit That Gets Filings Returned

Rule 26 requires the name and signature of the authorised representative at the foot of every pleading and requires the party to sign and verify it. Rule 34(4) requires every petition or application, interlocutory applications included, to be verified by affidavit in Form NCLT-6. The interaction with the insolvency rules is easy to miss: rule 10(1) of the AAA Rules directs that applications under sections 7, 9 and 10 be filed in accordance with rules 20 to 24 and rule 26 of Part III of the NCLT Rules, and Form 1 itself does not call for an affidavit, but the NCLT Rules do.

That interaction produced the leading recent authority. In Livein Aqua Solutions Pvt. Ltd. v. HDFC Bank Ltd. [2025 INSC 1349] a section 7 application had been verified on one date but supported by an affidavit sworn a week earlier. The registry issued a consolidated notice to twenty-six applicants under rule 28 of the NCLT Rules requiring defects to be cured within seven days, and when the bank did not refile, the Joint Registrar refused registration. Deciding the matter on 24 November 2025, the Supreme Court held that a defective affidavit does not render a section 7 application non est or incurable, and that a consolidated notice under rule 28 does not satisfy the proviso to section 7(5)(b) of the Code, which requires specific notice to the applicant to rectify defects within seven days of receipt. The Court directed the bank to cure the defects, affidavit included, within seven days, after which the bench was to hear the matter on merits.

The reading to take from that is not that defects are harmless. It is that a curable defect should not be converted into a dismissal without proper notice, an approach the Court traced to Uday Shankar Triyar v. Ram Kalewar Prasad Singh [(2006) 1 SCC 75], where it held that procedural rules exist to further justice and that curable irregularities should not be allowed to defeat substantive rights. The operational lesson for a first-time filer is narrower and duller: get the affidavit dates right, and when a defect notice arrives, treat the seven days as real.

Fee, Submission, Diary Number and the Seven Day Defect Clock

What Is the NCLT Filing Fee?

For insolvency applications the fee is fixed by the Schedule to rule 10(3) of the AAA Rules: twenty-five thousand rupees for an application by a financial creditor, whether solely or jointly, two thousand rupees for an application by an operational creditor, and twenty-five thousand rupees for an application by a corporate debtor. Fees for applications under the Companies Act come from the Schedule to the NCLT Rules and run on a very different scale, with most items between five hundred and ten thousand rupees. The portal offers online payment routed through the government payment gateway, or an offline route in which demand draft particulars are entered and a receipt generated. Proof that the fee has been paid is itself an annexure to the form.

Scrutiny, Objections and What the Diary Number Is Not

Rule 28(1) of the NCLT Rules governs receipt. The filing counter stamps the document, returns an acknowledgement, enters the particulars in the register after daily filing and assigns a diary number, which is written below the date stamp, and the papers then go for scrutiny. A diary number is not a case number. Registration under rule 29 follows only once the matter is taken on the board for numbering, which is why the portal dashboard shows a filing number, a scrutiny status and a registration status as three separate fields.

Where scrutiny reveals a defect, rule 28(2) requires notice to the party and return of the document for compliance, and failure to comply within seven days from the date of return sends the matter to the Registrar. Rule 28(3) lets the Registrar return the document for rectification or amendment and allow such reasonable time as he considers necessary, or extend the time already given. Rule 28(4) permits him, for reasons recorded in writing, to decline to register the pleading where the party takes no step. An order declining registration is appealable to the Tribunal under rule 63, which is the route the bank took in the Livein Aqua matter before it reached the Supreme Court.

Hard Copies and Service on the Other Side

Rule 23(1) still requires presentation in triplicate at the filing counter, and rule 24 still requires three authenticated copies with one delivered to each opposite party. The e-filing rollout was accompanied by a requirement to lodge complete hard copy sets alongside the electronic filing, and no general dispensation has been issued for the NCLT. The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal took a different course, dispensing with mandatory physical filing by a circular of 15 May 2023, but that applies to the appellate tribunal rather than to the NCLT benches. Practice differs between benches and has shifted over time, so confirm the current requirement with the concerned registry instead of assuming the electronic set will do.

Service is a separate obligation the portal does not discharge. Rules 4(3), 6(2) and 7(2) of the AAA Rules require the applicant to dispatch a copy of the application filed with the Adjudicating Authority to the registered office of the corporate debtor forthwith, by registered post or speed post. For an operational creditor the demand notice under section 8 of the Code must already have been delivered at the registered office by hand, registered post or speed post with acknowledgement due, or by electronic mail to a whole-time director, designated partner or key managerial personnel, with a copy filed with an information utility if there is one. Rule 23(5) of the NCLT Rules separately requires applications in pending matters to be presented only after advance service on the opposite side.

Registry Objections and How to Pre-empt Them

The objections set out below account for most of what comes back from scrutiny, and every one of them can be closed off at the drafting stage.

Objection	Why it arises	How to avoid it
Affidavit sworn before the date of verification, or not in Form NCLT-6	Rule 34(4) requires verification by affidavit in Form NCLT-6, and the dates must be internally consistent	Swear the affidavit on or after the date of verification and check the notarial endorsement
No board resolution or authority for the signatory	The registry checks that the person signing and verifying is authorised; rule 31 lets the Registrar call for the resolution	Attach the resolution naming the deponent, with the name matching the verification and the portal entry
Documents not in PDF/A, unsigned or poorly bookmarked	Order dated 22 December 2023, operative from 1 January 2024	Convert to PDF/A, bookmark to the master index, sign with a valid digital signature certificate
Pagination and index do not agree	Rule 20(1) requires the paper book to be paginated and indexed; rule 23(3) requires the index itself	Paginate the complete set last and rebuild the index from the paginated set
Fee short-paid or paid under the wrong head	Schedule to rule 10(3) of the AAA Rules for insolvency matters; Schedule to the NCLT Rules for Companies Act matters	Fix the applicant category before paying, and upload the payment receipt as an annexure
Wrong bench selected	Territorial jurisdiction follows the registered office, not the place of business or the contract	Check the registered office in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs master data on the day of filing
Wrong case type or provision chosen on the portal	The basic details screen drives the checklist, the fee and the mandatory fields for the whole filing	Settle the module and the section before saving basic details, and use the option to add further sections
No proof of dispatch to the corporate debtor	Rules 4(3), 6(2) and 7(2) of the AAA Rules require dispatch by registered post or speed post	File the postal receipt and the tracking record along with the application
Interim resolution professional details missing in a section 7 or 10 filing	The portal makes those fields mandatory for sections 7 and 10	Obtain the written communication in Form 2 and the eligibility certificate before starting the filing
Document in another language filed without a translation	Rule 27 requires a certified English translation before the matter can be set down for hearing	Prepare and certify translations of every vernacular document before the paper book is compiled

Does Section 240B Change How Petitions Are Filed?

The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) Act, 2026 inserted a new section 240B after section 240A, empowering the Central Government to provide an electronic portal for insolvency and bankruptcy procedures under the Code. It is an enabling provision and nothing more. It imposes no obligation, alters no filing requirement and displaces nothing in the NCLT Rules. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs told the parliamentary select committee examining the Bill that the provision was enabling rather than a mandate for immediate implementation, and that any platform would be rolled out in phases with testing, trial runs and stakeholder consultation. No portal has been notified under it.

The commencement notification of 22 May 2026, which brought the bulk of the Amendment Act into force on 26 May 2026, stopped short of the closing provisions of the Act. What section 240B signals is direction of travel rather than imminent change. A single insolvency portal spanning applications, claims, information utility records and the resolution professional's filings would remove a good deal of the duplication legal teams currently absorb. Until such a portal is notified and built, everything described above remains the operative process, and process design or budgeting that assumes otherwise is premature.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is electronic filing compulsory before the NCLT?

Filings are made through the NCLT e-filing portal and must comply with the mandatory pre-requisites directed by the order dated 22 December 2023 with effect from 1 January 2024. The NCLT Rules also continue to contemplate presentation of hard copies at the filing counter, and benches have generally continued to expect them, so plan for both.

What is the difference between a diary number, a filing number and a case number?

The filing counter assigns a diary number on receipt under rule 28(1) of the NCLT Rules, before scrutiny. The portal separately shows a filing number and a scrutiny status. A case number comes only when the matter is registered under rule 29, after any defects have been cured.

What is the filing fee for a section 9 application?

Two thousand rupees under the Schedule to rule 10(3) of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy (Application to Adjudicating Authority) Rules, 2016. A financial creditor's application under section 7 and a corporate applicant's application under section 10 each attract twenty-five thousand rupees. Proof of payment is an annexure to the form.

The registry has raised objections. How long is there to cure them?

Rule 28(2) allows seven days from the date of return, after which the matter goes to the Registrar, who may allow further reasonable time under rule 28(3). If registration is declined, rule 63 provides an appeal to the Tribunal. The Supreme Court has held that a curable defect such as a defective affidavit does not make a section 7 application non est.

Do documents have to be filed in PDF/A?

Yes. The order dated 22 December 2023 makes PDF/A mandatory, followed by electronic signature using a digital signature certificate issued by a certifying authority. Bookmarking to the master index and retention of the originals form part of the same set of requirements.

Does section 240B of the Code change how petitions are filed?

Not yet. Section 240B, inserted by the 2026 Amendment, empowers the Central Government to provide an electronic portal for insolvency and bankruptcy procedures. It is an enabling power, no portal has been notified under it, and the existing NCLT e-filing process together with the NCLT Rules continues to govern how petitions are filed.

Can a petition be filed at the NCLT registry without a digital signature certificate?

Not under the current pre-requisites. The order dated 22 December 2023 requires every electronically filed document to be signed using a digital signature certificate issued by a certifying authority, effective from 1 January 2024. The order records that an Aadhaar-based e-sign facility would be introduced as an alternative in due course, but until it is operational, a digital signature certificate remains the working requirement.

How many hard copies of a petition must be filed alongside the electronic filing?

Rule 23(1) of the National Company Law Tribunal Rules, 2016 requires presentation in triplicate at the filing counter, and Rule 24 requires three authenticated copies with one served on each opposite party. No general dispensation from physical filing has been issued for NCLT benches, unlike the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal, which dispensed with mandatory hard copies by a circular dated 15 May 2023. Practice varies by bench, so confirm current requirements with the concerned registry.

What is a diary number and how is it different from a case number?

The filing counter assigns a diary number on receipt under Rule 28(1) of the National Company Law Tribunal Rules, 2016, before the papers are scrutinised for defects. A case number is assigned only once the matter is registered under Rule 29, after scrutiny is complete and any defects have been cured. A diary number is proof of presentation, not proof that the filing has been accepted.

Which form is used to initiate a section 7 application by a financial creditor?

Form 1, prescribed under Rule 4 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy (Application to Adjudicating Authority) Rules, 2016. An operational creditor uses Form 5 under Rule 6, and a corporate applicant uses Form 6 under Rule 7. Applications under sections 7 and 10 additionally require the proposed interim resolution professional's written communication in Form 2 and eligibility certificate to be ready before the filing is begun.

Does the demand notice under section 8 have to be served before filing a section 9 application?

Yes. An operational creditor must first deliver a demand notice under section 8 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 at the corporate debtor's registered office, by hand, registered post, speed post with acknowledgement due, or electronic mail to a whole-time director, designated partner or key managerial personnel, with a copy filed with an information utility where one exists, before a section 9 application can be filed.

What is Form NCLT-6 and when is it required?

Form NCLT-6 is the prescribed affidavit of verification that Rule 34(4) of the National Company Law Tribunal Rules, 2016 requires for every petition or application, including interlocutory applications. The verification and the affidavit must be internally consistent in their dates; a mismatch, such as an affidavit sworn before the date of verification, is one of the most common defects the registry raises.

What happens if the registry declines to register a petition after objections are raised?

Rule 28(4) of the National Company Law Tribunal Rules, 2016 permits the Registrar, for reasons recorded in writing, to decline registration where the party has not complied with a defect notice. That order can be appealed to the Tribunal under Rule 63. The Supreme Court has held that curable defects, including a defective verifying affidavit, should not be allowed to defeat a substantive application without proper notice and an opportunity to cure them.