Mapping the Un-Notified Provisions of the IBC (Amendment) Act, 2026

Insolvency · IBC (Amendment) Act, 2026 · June 2026

When Half the Statute Stands Notified

Mapping the Un-Notified Provisions of the IBC (Amendment) Act, 2026

I.  Introduction

The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) Act, 2026 (Act No. 6 of 2026) received Presidential assent on 6 April 2026 and was published in the Gazette of India on the same date. Nearly seven weeks later, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, by Notification S.O. 2625(E) dated 22 May 2026, appointed 26 May 2026 as the date of commencement — but only for a specified set of provisions. A material portion of the Amendment Act, including some of its most-discussed reforms, remains un-notified as on date.

This article maps the un-notified provisions, identifies the structural reason each remains parked, and offers a practitioner’s checklist of what stakeholders should and should not do in the interim phase.

II.  The Statutory Basis for Piecemeal Commencement

Section 1(2) of the Amendment Act expressly empowers the Central Government, by notification, to bring different provisions into force on different dates. The proviso further clarifies that any reference within a provision to the “commencement of this Act” is to be construed as a reference to the coming into force of that particular provision. Phased commencement is therefore statutorily contemplated and is not an anomaly.

III.  What Stands Notified with Effect from 26 May 2026

With effect from 26 May 2026, the first tranche puts in force virtually every reform of the Amendment Act that can take effect on its own — that is, without waiting for fresh regulations or classification notifications. The headline changes are summarised below.

The most visible change is the introduction of strict timelines at every stage of the process. The Adjudicating Authority must now dispose of admission applications, withdrawal applications, resolution-plan approval, liquidation orders and dissolution orders within defined windows — typically fourteen or thirty days. Where the prescribed period is breached, the Adjudicating Authority is required to record its reasons in writing. The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal, in turn, must dispose of appeals within three months.

The clean-slate principle evolved by the Supreme Court in Ghanshyam Mishra Sugars Ltd. v. Sales Tax Officer, Orissa (2021) now finds express statutory anchoring in section 31. On the approval of a resolution plan, all pre-approval claims against the corporate debtor under any other law stand extinguished by force of statute, and the licences, permits, registrations, quotas and concessions associated with the approved resolution plan continue undisturbed for the remaining period of those grants. By an express deeming provision, the Amendment Act extends this position to all resolution plans approved since the original commencement of the Code, except for matters that have already attained finality.

A one-time, CoC-led safety valve has been introduced. The committee of creditors may, by a sixty-six per cent. vote, apply to the Adjudicating Authority before a liquidation order is passed to restore the corporate insolvency resolution process — the restored process being required to be completed within 120 days. This recognises that the CoC’s appetite for resolution may revive after the initial CIRP timeline has lapsed but before the corporate debtor is sent into liquidation.

The withdrawal route under section 12A has been recast. It now requires the resolution professional’s application with the approval of ninety per cent. of the CoC, and is barred both before the CoC is constituted and after the first invitation for resolution plans has been issued. Fraudulent or wrongful trading under section 66 is now invocable by the liquidator in addition to the resolution professional, and the new section 26 confirms that avoidance and fraudulent-trading actions survive the completion of the CIRP or liquidation process.

The civil-penalty architecture has been comprehensively overhauled. The substituted section 235A provides for penalties of up to three times the loss caused or unlawful gain, or up to ₹5 crore where unquantifiable, with a per-day floor for continuing contraventions. New sections 64A and 183A introduce penalties of ₹1 lakh to ₹2 crore for the initiation of frivolous or vexatious proceedings under Parts II and III of the Code, respectively. Sections 67B and 67C — targeted at contraventions of the moratorium and the resolution plan, and at the concealment of disputes in operational-creditor applications — replace the omitted sections 74 and 76, marking a deliberate legislative shift from criminal prosecution to administrative penalty.

For cross-reference: the first tranche covers the following clauses of the Amendment Act — sections 2 to 6, sections 8 to 33, sub-clause (iii) of clause (a) and clause (b) of section 34, sections 35 to 39, section 41, sections 43 to 44, section 46, sections 48 to 59, sections 61 to 66, section 68, clause (a) of section 69, clause (a) of section 70, sub-clauses (i) to (xxvi) of clause (b) of section 70 (excepting sub-clause (xx)), and section 72.

IV.  The Un-Notified Provisions — Five Clusters

The un-notified provisions of the Amendment Act, mapped cluster-wise, are as follows.

IV.1  Creditor-Initiated Insolvency Resolution Process (Chapter IV-A)

This is the largest deferred cluster, and arguably the most consequential of the reforms that remain on the statute book but not in force.

CIIRP is a new, third type of corporate insolvency resolution process — distinct from both the existing CIRP under Chapter II and the pre-packaged insolvency resolution process (PPIRP) under Chapter III-A. It is designed for resolution at the initiative of a limited, to-be-notified class of financial creditors, with the management of the corporate debtor remaining in possession during the process, subject to oversight by a resolution professional. The broad architecture, drawn from the un-notified Chapter IV-A, is as follows.

A financial creditor belonging to a notified class of financial institutions, on a default by the corporate debtor, may appoint a resolution professional and initiate the process after a three-step approval: first, approval from financial creditors holding fifty-one per cent. in value of debt due to that notified class; second, thirty-day notice to the corporate debtor with an opportunity for it to make a representation; and third, post-representation approval (again at fifty-one per cent.) within thirty days of receiving the representation.

The corporate debtor may, within thirty days of the public announcement, file an objection before the Adjudicating Authority on the ground that no default has occurred or that the initiation was procedurally non-compliant. The resolution professional is required to complete the process within 150 days, extendable once by 45 days. Management of the corporate debtor remains with the board of directors throughout — a debtor-in-possession model — subject to the resolution professional’s veto on board resolutions. A moratorium under section 14 is not automatic in CIIRP; it requires a separate application by the resolution professional. Failure to obtain CoC approval of a resolution plan within the timeline results in mandatory conversion to a full CIRP under Chapter II, with the creditor that initiated the CIIRP being deemed to be the section 7 applicant.

It should be noted that sub-clause (iii) of clause (a) and clause (b) of section 34 of the Amendment Act — both of which reduce the financial creditor approval threshold for the PPIRP from sixty-six per cent. to fifty-one per cent. — have been notified and are now in force. Only those sub-clauses of section 34 that introduce CIIRP-specific cross-references remain parked.

Three further steps are required before CIIRP can become operationally available: the Central Government must notify the class of financial institutions entitled to initiate CIIRP under section 58B(1); the classes of corporate debtors eligible for the process under section 58A(1) must be separately notified; and the IBBI (Creditor-Initiated Insolvency Resolution Process) Regulations must be made and notified.

IV.2  Group Insolvency (Chapter VA)

Section 42 of the Amendment Act, which inserts the new section 59A (and the surrounding Chapter VA), remains un-notified. The provision empowers the Central Government to prescribe, by rules, the manner and conditions for conducting insolvency proceedings against two or more corporate debtors that form part of a group — including provision for a common Bench, coordination between processes, a common insolvency professional, a group-level committee of creditors, binding coordination agreements, and treatment of group-level costs.

Crucially, sub-sections (4) to (6) of section 59A build in a Parliamentary lay-and-modify safeguard: every draft rule must be laid before each House of Parliament for thirty session days before notification, with both Houses retaining power to disapprove or modify. The deferral of section 42 is therefore constitutive of the design. The substantive provision itself cannot be brought into force unless and until rules are first drafted, laid and (assuming no contrary resolution) notified.

IV.3  Insolvency and Bankruptcy Fund (section 224)

Section 67 of the Amendment Act recasts section 224 of the Code. It (i) expands the sources credited to the Fund, and (ii) creates a withdrawal head for contributors during proceedings, to be utilised for payment to workmen, protecting the assets of the contributor, meeting incidental costs during proceedings, or such other purposes as may be prescribed.

Operationally, section 67 requires (i) Central Government rules under the new clauses (zi), (zia) and (zib) of section 239(2) of the Code (which sit within section 69(b) of the Amendment Act — itself un-notified), and (ii) an IBBI procedural framework for the withdrawal mechanism. Until both are in place, the new section 224(3)(a) withdrawal route is not available to contributors. The architectural design has therefore yoked section 67 to the deferred rule-making heads, preventing isolated commencement.

IV.4  Cross-Border Insolvency (section 240C)

Section 71 of the Amendment Act, to the extent it inserts section 240C of the Code, empowers the Central Government to prescribe — by rules — the manner and conditions for administering cross-border insolvency proceedings, including the process for recognition of foreign proceedings, granting of relief, judicial cooperation, assistance, coordination and designation of one or more Benches for handling such proceedings. The Explanation extends the definition of “corporate debtor” for this purpose to any person incorporated with limited liability outside India.

As with Group Insolvency, the substantive provision is subject to the Parliamentary lay-and-modify procedure: section 240C(3) imports sub-sections (4) to (6) of section 59A mutatis mutandis. The corresponding rule-making head under sub-clause (v) of clause (b) of section 69 of the Amendment Act (inserting clause (zma) in section 239(2)) is also un-notified.

This is the fourth substantive attempt to introduce a comprehensive cross-border insolvency framework into Indian insolvency law, following recommendations by various expert committees. In the interim, sections 234 and 235 of the Code (letters of request and bilateral agreements with reciprocating countries) remain un-notified independently, leaving practitioners reliant on judicial cooperation protocols of the kind evolved in State Bank of India v. Jet Airways (India) Ltd. and on letters rogatory under the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908.

IV.5  Electronic Portal (section 240B)

Section 71 of the Amendment Act, to the extent it inserts section 240B of the Code, empowers the Central Government to notify an electronic portal and the related procedures for carrying out insolvency and bankruptcy processes under the Code. The provision is enabling rather than self-executing — its commencement is meaningful only once the portal infrastructure has been built and the related operational and technical guidelines have been issued by IBBI. The clubbing of sections 240B and 240C within a single section 71 of the Amendment Act means both must wait, though it would have been open to the Government to bifurcate and notify the section 240B enabling provision sooner.

V.  The Architectural Coherence

Read together, S.O. 2625(E) reflects an internally coherent design. Every un-notified head falls within one of three categories.

The notified first tranche, by contrast, is composed entirely of provisions that either operate by their own force or are supported by existing IBBI regulations that can be readily amended — the IBBI (Insolvency Resolution Process for Corporate Persons) Regulations, 2016, the IBBI (Liquidation Process) Regulations, 2016, and the IBBI (Voluntary Liquidation Process) Regulations, 2017, each of which has now been suitably amended by the 2 June 2026 notifications.

VI.  The Absence of Official Explanation

It bears noting that no official statement has been published by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs or the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India explaining which provisions have been left out of the first tranche and when each may be brought into force. The reasoning set out in Part V above is inferential — drawn from the architecture of the Amendment Act itself, the record of the Select Committee deliberations on the underlying Bill, and the body of professional commentary that has flagged the need for regulations, valuation standards, eligibility criteria, procedural rules and coordination mechanisms.

Stakeholders awaiting clarity should therefore not treat any expected timeline for the second tranche as definitive. The Central Government retains the power under section 1(2) of the Amendment Act to notify the balance of provisions on such date or dates as it considers appropriate, including in further phases.

VII.  Practitioner Takeaways for the Interim Period

VIII.  Conclusion

The IBC (Amendment) Act, 2026 will, on full commencement, be the most significant overhaul of the Code since its enactment in 2016. The first tranche of notifications has operationalised those reforms that can take effect on their own. The remainder — CIIRP, Group Insolvency, the IB Fund recast, Cross-Border Insolvency, and the Electronic Portal — awaits a combination of further classification notifications, subordinate legislation, Parliamentary lay-and-modify exercises, and operational build-out.

In the absence of an official roadmap, stakeholders would do well to plan on the basis of the architecture rather than expectations of timing. The provisions in the first tranche are the ones to deploy now; those in the second tranche, however significant, should be treated as prospective until their commencement is notified.

About the author: Prakash K. Pandya is an Advocate, Insolvency Professional and Accredited Mediator at the Chamber of Prakash K. Pandya, Borivali (West), Mumbai. He is empanelled on the Bombay High Court Mediation and Conciliation Centre and registered with the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI Reg. No. IBBI/IPA-002/IP-N00201/2017-18/10587). His practice spans insolvency and bankruptcy, corporate and securities law, real estate, and alternative dispute resolution.

This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific legal counsel, contact a qualified professional. © pkpandya.com

Prakash K Pandya

Practising Advocate, SIMI accredited Mediator and Insolvency Professional based at Mumbai, India. Have keen interest in International insolvency and mediation. Earlier practised as Company Secretary for over 25 years and now practising as Advocate since 2020.

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