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GoFirst Liquidation, Zomato Insolvency Plea, DHFL Bondholders, And More

Your weekly rundown of significant judicial rulings and legal battles influencing policy, companies, regulation, and governance.

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By BasisPoint Insight

April 5, 2025 at 7:18 AM IST

“Why is the Court being so touchy?... Every day in media we find severe criticism of the court… such criticism will be read and forgotten in a few days.”
- A bench of Justices Abhay Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan of Supreme Court while hearing Wikipedia’s appeal over the high court’s order asking it to take down ANI Media’s page with alleged defamatory edits. 

Why is it difficult to find good suitors for insolvent airlines?
Airlines have an unusual business model. First, they buy a plane, then they sell the brand-new plane, only to lease it back next. This leaves them with large dry powder to run operations that are usually exorbitant. One could call it smart financial engineering—and it is. The catch? When an airline goes bankrupt, its bankers have little assets to recover, despite the airline having once posted billions of rupees in revenue and profit. The experience of several insolvent Indian airlines makes that painfully clear. 

This week, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal dismissed an appeal by one Busy Bee Airways challenging liquidation of GoFirst, closing the curtain on any possibility of reviving the defunct airline. GoFirst is the second airline in India after Jet Airways to go through the insolvency resolution process and ending up in liquidation. 

While the ways the two airlines reached the liquidation stages are different, it is interesting to note that there have been no successful revivals of airline companies under India’s fairly young insolvency law. Jet Airways did attract a suitor, but the vows were never exchanged as the partner did not cough up the bride’s money. GoFirst couldn't attract any viable bids, perhaps with potential suitors smarting under the lessons from Jet. 

These failed attempts at reviving grounded airlines have also left fewer players in India’s aviation industry a development that never fares well for passengers. 

As a last-ditch effort to acquire GoFirst’s assets though, EaseMyTrip’s Nishant Pitti backed Busy Bee may still have the option to knock on the Supreme Court’s door for respite.

Key Rulings of the Week: 

  • Supreme Court upholds the resolution plan for DHFL setting aside an NCLAT order that asked the lenders panel to reconsider bond holders’ plea over valuation during insolvency procedure.
  • The Supreme Court upheld a Calcutta High Court ruling that scrapped as many as 24,000 appointments of teaching and non-teaching jobs by the West Bengal govt in relation to the 2016 jobs for cash scam

The Week That Was

Courts

  • Delhi High Court orders takedown of websites found to be infringing Ginger hotels’ trademark owned by Tata group
  • X Corp denied interim relief by Karnataka High Court in its case against the Indian govt over alleged censorship
  • Congress MP Mohammad Jawed and AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi have moved the Supreme Court challenging the recently-passed Waqf Amendment Act as being discriminatory against the Muslim community
  • Delhi High Court ordered Wikipedia to remove defamatory edits on ANI Media’s page; Wikimedia appeals before the Supreme Court
  • Supreme Court’s judges resolve to disclose their assets on the court’s website in a significant step towards judicial transparency
  • Bombay High Court upholds the powers of the Bar Council of India’s power to inspect law colleges
  • Karnataka High Court directs cab aggregators like rapido, Uber and Ola to stop operation of bike taxis  in the state unless the government notifies relevant guidelines under Section 93 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, along with the necessary rules.
  • Bombay High Court imposes a fine of ₹25,000 on Anil Ambani for seeking an urgent hearing in a tax notice case
  • ChatGPT does not store its data in India and therefore the Indian copyright will not apply to it; LLM built to generate content, not regurgitate it: OpenAI tells Delhi High Court in a lawsuit filed by ANI Media

Quasi Courts

  • NCLAT dismisses petitions challenging the liquidation of GoFirst airline
  • NCLT’s Delhi bench rejects insolvency petition against Zomato by one of its operational creditors

Others

  • Parliament passes Waqf Amendment Act
  • Law firm IndusLaw partners partners with legisquest to develop an AI-powered legal tool designed for the legal space
  • NLU-Delhi’s Project39A has found a new home at NALSAR, Hyderabad under a new name of The Square Circle. 

The Big Listings

  • April 8: The Bombay High Court will resume its hearing on the case filed by Skoda Volkswagen’s India unit against the show-cause notices issued to it by customs authority
  • April 15: The Delhi High Court will hear a trademark case filed by Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc. against an Indian firm called Tesla Power India Pvt. Ltd.
  • April 24: Karnataka High Court is set to hear X’s lawsuit against the Indian government over “unrestrained censorship” of content on its platform
  • April 30: NCLT Bengaluru bench will hear the case about Aakash Educational Services Ltd’s shareholding amid Byju’s insolvency case

* The dates of hearing can change and a concrete list is prepared just a day before

Legal Moves 

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