From April 2018 Default To September 2026 Defects: The Mumbai Metro One Story Of Anil Ambani

Government-Owned IIFCL Moves NCLT Against Anil Ambani-Led Mumbai Metro Over ₹1,745 Crore Dues

On 30 September 2026, the National Company Law Tribunal in Mumbai heard an insolvency application filed by India Infrastructure Finance Company (UK) Limited against Mumbai Metro One Private Limited. IIFCL UK is the overseas arm of the government-owned India Infrastructure Finance Company Limited. Mumbai Metro One Private Limited is controlled by the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Infrastructure group. The claim is for approximately US$182 million, or roughly ₹1,745 crore, arising from an External Commercial Borrowing facility. The stated date of default is 1 April 2018.

The Bench comprising Judicial Member Nilesh Sharma and Technical Member Sameer Kakar did not admit the petition. Instead, it identified multiple defects and granted IIFCL UK seven days to cure them. The matter is listed next for 12 October 2026. The defects themselves, limitation, inclusion of amounts falling within the Section 10A COVID-19 protection period, and the failure to state the claim in Indian rupees as required by Form 1—reveal more than technical shortcomings. They expose the prolonged interval between default and effective recovery action, and they invite scrutiny of how public-backed lending is monitored and enforced when the borrower is a high-profile corporate group.

The principal amount claimed is approximately US$56.35 million, with the balance representing interest. The facility was repayable in sixty unequal quarterly instalments. IIFCL UK placed on record NeSL Form C recording the default and relied on acknowledgments appearing in Mumbai Metro One’s balance sheets from year to year, as well as a one-time settlement proposal dated 6 September 2022.

Counsel informed the Tribunal that around 10 percent of the dues had been received in December 2022, after which payments ceased. Earlier insolvency proceedings initiated by other lenders, including State Bank of India and IDBI Bank, were withdrawn after those lenders assigned their debt to the National Asset Reconstruction Company Limited. IIFCL UK maintained that its ECB exposure remained separate and that, although it had given in-principle approval to an earlier restructuring proposal of the joint lenders’ forum, its board had never finally approved the restructuring.

The Tribunal’s first concern was limitation. A default dating to April 2018 sits well outside the ordinary three-year period. IIFCL UK pointed to successive balance-sheet acknowledgments and the 2022 OTS proposal as extending limitation. The Bench directed the applicant to place on record a table demonstrating how limitation had been extended from one acknowledgment to the next.

The second concern was more structural. Section 10A of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code bars the initiation of insolvency proceedings for defaults that arose during the statutorily protected COVID-19 period. The Tribunal observed that amounts falling due within that period “can never be claimed in an insolvency application.” Counsel conceded that such amounts had not been segregated from the claim. The Bench warned that the application in its existing form could be rejected if the prohibited-period dues remained included.

The third defect was formal: although the debt was disclosed in US dollars, Form 1 requires the outstanding amount also to be expressed in Indian rupees. That figure was missing. NeSL Form D was likewise absent.

These are not trivial irregularities. They are the cumulative product of years of non-resolution. A government-owned lender’s overseas arm is still, in late 2026, attempting to perfect an insolvency application over a default that crystallised in 2018. The project in question is a metro-rail venture in India’s commercial capital, an infrastructure asset that, by its nature, draws upon public confidence and, through the IIFCL structure, upon public-backed financing.

When such an exposure remains unresolved for eight years, and when the first substantive hearing still turns on whether the claim is time-barred, whether COVID-period dues have been excised, and whether the basic Form 1 is complete, the public is entitled to ask how the monitoring and enforcement machinery of government-owned lenders functions in practice.

The pattern is not isolated. Other lenders had earlier initiated insolvency proceedings against the same company; those proceedings were withdrawn after assignment to NARCL. IIFCL UK’s own board, according to its counsel, never finally approved a restructuring that had received in-principle support at the joint-lenders level. A partial recovery of roughly 10 percent occurred in December 2022. Thereafter, silence.

Balance-sheet acknowledgments continued. An OTS proposal was made. Yet the formal insolvency application that finally reached the Tribunal in 2026 arrived with defects that the Bench could not overlook. The question that follows is not merely procedural. It is institutional: what systems of internal review, what escalation protocols, and what accountability mechanisms exist inside a government-owned financier when a large ECB exposure remains unpaid for the better part of a decade?

The presence of Section 10A issues is particularly revealing. The COVID-19 protection period was designed to shield businesses from insolvency actions during an unprecedented crisis. Its misuse, or its inadvertent inclusion in a claim years later suggests that the precise quantification of the debt, instalment by instalment, had not been subjected to rigorous pre-filing scrutiny.

When counsel is compelled to concede that prohibited-period amounts remain embedded in the total, the impression left is one of an application assembled under pressure rather than of a carefully calibrated recovery strategy. The same observation applies to the missing rupee conversion and the absent NeSL Form D. These are elementary requirements. Their absence after years of default does not inspire confidence in the diligence with which public-backed claims are prepared.

The broader context of Anil Ambani-group entities and their interactions with the insolvency regime is relevant only insofar as it is publicly documented and directly illuminating. Personal insolvency proceedings against Anil Ambani himself, arising from guarantees given for other group companies, have been admitted by the NCLT in separate matters.

Resolution plans for certain group companies have resulted in substantial haircuts for financial creditors. Those facts are part of the public record. They do not, however, prove any impropriety in the present Mumbai Metro One case. What they do establish is a recurring environment in which large exposures, complex corporate structures, and prolonged legal processes intersect. In that environment, the ability of a government-owned lender to convert acknowledged debt into timely recovery becomes a matter of public concern.

Why did it take until 2026 for IIFCL UK to place a perfected (or near-perfected) Section 7 application before the Tribunal? Why were successive balance-sheet acknowledgments and an OTS proposal insufficient to crystallise a clean claim earlier? Why was the segregation of Section 10A amounts left for the Tribunal to discover? Why was the basic Form 1 incomplete? Each of these questions is answerable in principle by reference to internal files, board minutes and correspondence that are not yet public.

Until those answers are forthcoming, the episode stands as an illustration of how public money, once lent, can remain in a state of suspended animation—acknowledged on paper, partially recovered in dribs, procedurally entangled, and still not reduced to an enforceable insolvency process nearly a decade after default.

The Tribunal has given IIFCL UK seven days to cure the defects. An amended Form 1, a limitation table, and the excision of Section 10A amounts may yet produce an admissible application. Even if that occurs, the deeper institutional question will remain. When a government-owned entity’s overseas arm is still perfecting its pleadings in 2026 over a 2018 default on a metro project, the public is entitled to wonder whether the architecture of public infrastructure finance contains adequate safeguards against prolonged non-recovery.

The ₹1,745 crore figure is not an abstract number. It represents resources that originated, directly or indirectly, from the public balance sheet. The continued inability to convert that exposure into timely resolution is not merely a private commercial failure. It is a public-accountability failure, and the defects identified by the NCLT only make the failure more visible.

The next hearing is scheduled for 12 October 2026. Between now and then, IIFCL UK will attempt to repair its application. The larger repair—of systems that allow eight years to elapse between default and a still-defective insolvency plea—remains unaddressed. Until that systemic question is confronted, every successive procedural adjournment will continue to signal the same concerning reality: public-backed lenders can acknowledge debt, receive partial payments, and still find themselves, years later, explaining to a Tribunal why their claim is not yet ready for admission.