IBBI Suspends Alok Kailash Saksena for 2 Years: Associate Decor CIRP, GST Record Lapses

The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) has suspended insolvency professional Alok Kailash Saksena for two years over his handling of the corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP) of Associate Decor Limited. The Disciplinary Committee order, No. IBBI/DC/353/2026 dated 13 November 2026, finds that he issued the information memorandum without audited financial statements, delayed appointing a statutory auditor, failed to keep records that the GST authorities later asked for, and never took the separate GST registration that a company in CIRP must obtain.

Mr Saksena holds Registration No. IBBI/IPA-001/IP-P00056/2017-18/10134 and is a professional member of the Indian Institute of Insolvency Professionals of ICAI. The order was signed by Whole Time Members Dr Bhushan Kumar Sinha and Jayanti Prasad. It comes into force 30 days after the date of issue, so the suspension starts in mid-December 2026. Under Section 206 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016, he cannot continue any existing assignment once it takes effect, and committees of creditors of companies where he is acting have been told to replace him.

How the Associate Decor CIRP reached the IBBI

The National Company Law Tribunal, Bengaluru Bench, admitted Oriental Bank of Commerce's Section 7 application against Associate Decor Limited on 26 October 2018 and appointed Mr Saksena as interim resolution professional; he was later confirmed as resolution professional. A complaint dated 17 May 2024 led the Board to issue a show cause notice on 30 July 2024. He replied on 23 August 2024 and, after several requests to reschedule, appeared through his advocate for a virtual hearing on 7 August 2026.

The CIRP itself remains unsettled. On 12 January 2026 the two members of the Bengaluru bench split on the resolution plan of Mohammed Enterprises (Tanzania) Limited dated 11 February 2020: the Judicial Member approved it, while the Technical Member rejected it, ordered liquidation and recorded that 21 of 23 prospective resolution applicants had withdrawn and that VAT loan eligibility of ₹205 crore had been left out of the valuation. A third member, Justice Jyotsna Sharma, gave her opinion on 30 September 2026 that the procedural violations were not material enough to reject the plan, but left open whether the plan is conditional. The NCLT had not passed a final order on the plan when the IBBI decided the case.

Mr Saksena argued that the complainant had taken the same allegations to the NCLT, the Karnataka High Court and the Supreme Court, and that the Board should wait. The Committee rejected that plea. It noted that the Supreme Court, in its judgment of 3 January 2025 in Mohammed Enterprises (Tanzania) Ltd. v. Farooq Ali Khan, had set aside the High Court's writ order on delay without going into merits, and held that the NCLT asks whether the CIRP was valid while the Disciplinary Committee asks whether the professional did his job. Objections about the complaint's annexures not being supplied and about Sections 218 and 219 not being followed also failed, since the notice was issued under Regulations 10A and 11(2) of the Inspection and Investigation Regulations.

Eight charges and what the Disciplinary Committee decided

The show cause notice carried eight charges. Six were upheld, one was left open and one was dropped:

Information memorandum issued without audited financial statements

Regulation 36(2)(c) of the CIRP Regulations requires the information memorandum to contain audited financial statements for the last two financial years, plus provisional statements for the current year. The memorandum placed before the CoC on 4 May 2019 had only provisional balance sheets as on 31 March 2017 and 31 March 2018. Mr Saksena said the earlier management had left the accounts unaudited, that he had disclosed the gap at the first CoC meeting and in the memorandum itself, and that both the NCLAT and the third member had found no material irregularity.

The Committee held that "shall" in Regulation 36(2)(c) makes the requirement mandatory. Disclosing that audited figures are missing tells a bidder about the gap but does not let it make an informed bid, and unaudited figures leave prospective resolution applicants relying on numbers no independent auditor has checked. The minutes of the third CoC meeting on 26 February 2019 recorded that the company had not given access to its Tally books, yet nothing showed that he applied to the NCLT under Section 19(2) of the Code for directions to the company's personnel to cooperate. The Committee also pointed out that the third member had herself called the missing audited statements an irregularity in procedure.

79 days in which no auditor appointment was started

The unaudited accounts were discussed at the first CoC meeting on 26 December 2018 and the third on 26 February 2019, but appointing an auditor was first raised at the ninth meeting on 20 August 2019. The auditor was appointed after the tenth meeting on 6 September 2019, after Form G inviting expressions of interest had gone out on 23 August 2019, and the audit report came only on 3 February 2020, after the last date for resolution plans.

Mr Saksena pointed to the Supreme Court's status quo order and a Karnataka High Court stay. The Committee did the arithmetic for him: even leaving out the status quo period (30 November 2018 to 2 April 2019) and the stay (20 June 2019 to 8 August 2019), he had 79 days between 2 April 2019 and 20 June 2019 to begin the process, and once the stay lifted he completed the appointment in 29 days. The status quo order had not stopped him holding CoC meetings, so it did not stop preparatory steps such as identifying audit firms or seeking quotations. An affidavit from a chartered accountant that data from a damaged hard disk was recovered only in late April 2019 cut the other way: incomplete books made an early auditor appointment more necessary, not less.

Insurance claim on GST-attached inventory

The GST department had attached stock worth about ₹30 crore from 4 September 2018 until the Karnataka High Court released it on 13 February 2019. At the ninth CoC meeting the creditors asked Mr Saksena to explore an insurance claim on the deteriorating inventory. The only step on record was a single email of 21 September 2019 to an employee of the company, whose reply said the claim was time-barred and that losses from GST action were not covered. The minutes of the tenth to 22nd CoC meetings show no report back. The Committee did not find a breach of the Section 25(1) duty to preserve assets, but held that he failed to carry out the CoC's direction with diligence and to keep the CoC informed.

₹31 crore exposure from missing GST records

An intelligence report of the Office of the Assistant Commissioner of Commercial Taxes dated 5 December 2020 alleged that the company sold goods below price and proposed additional tax of ₹15,52,92,439 and an equal penalty for July 2017 to March 2020. The department rejected the company's objections because month-wise manufacturing accounts, cost and pricing sheets, the month-wise stock register, purchase orders, debit and credit notes, proof of movement and stock ledgers for the goods said to have been rejected were not produced.

Mr Saksena said two hard drives with complete records had been handed over and that product-wise cost records were not required under the Companies Act. The Committee found no index or acknowledgement showing the drives held what was asked for, and noted that he never went back to the department to correct the report. It relied on Section 35(1) of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017, which requires a true account of production, inward and outward supplies and stock, and Rule 56(12) of the CGST Rules, which requires monthly production accounts from manufacturers. Because the company ran as a going concern under his management from 26 October 2018, these records were his responsibility for the CIRP period, though not for earlier years. The failure exposed the company to a proposed demand of more than ₹31 crore.

CoC minutes circulated after 48 hours

Regulation 24(7) of the CIRP Regulations requires minutes to reach all participants electronically within 48 hours of a meeting. On the dates Mr Saksena himself supplied, minutes of eight of the nine meetings in question went out late; the eighth meeting on Friday 21 June 2019, for instance, had its minutes circulated on Tuesday 25 June 2019. His explanation that the office was shut on weekends and holidays was not accepted.

Separate GST registration under Notification No. 11/2020-Central Tax

This charge matters well beyond one company. Notification No. 11/2020-Central Tax dated 21 March 2020, issued under Section 148 of the CGST Act, treats a corporate debtor whose affairs are managed by an IRP or RP as a distinct person from the date of that appointment. It must take a new registration in every State or Union territory where the corporate debtor was registered within 30 days of the appointment, or within 30 days of the notification where the IRP or RP was appointed earlier, and file its first return under Section 40 for the period from becoming liable until registration is granted. The deadline was later extended to 30 June 2020 by Notification No. 39/2020-Central Tax dated 5 May 2020.

Mr Saksena argued that the 330-day CIRP period ended on 16 March 2020, five days before the notification, and that it gave no guidance for cases where the plan was awaiting NCLT approval; he kept filing returns under the company's existing GSTIN. The Committee rejected this. Under the proviso to Section 23(1) of the Code, the resolution professional keeps managing the corporate debtor until the NCLT approves a plan or orders liquidation, and he admittedly did so and filed GST returns after 16 March 2020. On 21 March 2020 the company was therefore a corporate debtor managed by a resolution professional, and the notification applied.

Plan charge kept open and an adjourned-meeting notice accepted

The charge that he failed to examine the Mohammed Enterprises plan under Section 30(2), including disclosures under Section 29A, source of funds and conditionality, was not decided because the NCLT has yet to rule on whether the plan is conditional. He must keep the Board informed of the outcome of IA 161/2020, and the Board may take up this charge again afterwards.

On the eighth charge, the 19th CoC meeting held on 10 February 2020 was adjourned in the meeting itself to 3 pm on 11 February 2020 to consider the resolution plans. The Committee held that Regulation 19 does not require a fresh notice for an adjourned meeting fixed to a set date and time for the same business, that considering a revised version of the same plan did not make it a new meeting, and that a representative of the suspended board had attended the 19th meeting.

What the order means for resolution professionals and their advisers

In fixing the penalty, the Committee said these lapses undermine timely resolution and value maximisation through a transparent process. Several findings turn on routine compliance that CA firms advising resolution professionals handle: getting an auditor appointed early when books are incomplete, moving the NCLT under Section 19(2) when management withholds records, keeping GST-compliant production and stock records while the company runs as a going concern, and taking the separate GSTIN required by Notification No. 11/2020-Central Tax. The Committee also treated a 48-hour deadline as running through weekends.

The order follows other recent IBBI disciplinary action, including the three-year suspension of liquidator Venkata Sivakumar in the Jeypore Sugar case and the one-year suspension of Sanjay Borad over his resolution professional fee in Golden Tobacco. Copies of the Saksena order go to the Indian Institute of Insolvency Professionals of ICAI for further action and to the Registrar of the NCLT Principal Bench. The next date to watch is the Bengaluru bench's final order on the Mohammed Enterprises plan, which will decide whether the open charge comes back to the Board.

Official source: View the official source document