Bidders, or “resolution applicants” drive the corporate insolvency resolution process. Without their cash, hapless creditors would be caught in a never-ending struggle to recover their dues from the rapidly perishing assets of the debtor. Yet, one of the quirks of the CIRP is that bidders have no vested rights while the process is ongoing. Since the seminal judgment in ArcelorMittal v. Satish Kumar Gupta, the law has been that resolution applicants have no right to challenge any aspect of the CIRP till the NCLT approves or disapproves of a bid.

The latest Supreme Court judgement to reiterate this principle is Bank of Baroda v. MBL Infrastructures. The issue in the case was the applicability of Section 29A to disqualify a bidder that had submitted its bid before the section had been introduced. The Court held that this did not matter, “the concern of the Court is only from the point of view of two entities viz., corporate creditors and corporate debtors”. The bidder, the Court observed, “has no role except to facilitate the process”.

Having said all this, the Court refrained from striking down the defective bid, as it had already ripened into a plan that had been approved and acted upon. Bidders may not have many rights left under the IBC, but they do have a way of manoeuvring things to suit themselves.