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A Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice NV Ramana and consisting of Justices AS Bopanna and Hima Kohli today stayed the winding up process of SpiceJet after Harish Salve, Senior Advocate, appearing for the airline sought for three weeks time to hold discussion with Credit Suisse to try and settle the matter.

KV Vishwanathan, Senior Advocate, appearing to Credit Suisse, agreed for the adjournment, however informed the court that “the amount they are willing to pay is not even worth mentioning.” 
The CJI on hearing the submissions questioned the airline, “do you want to run the airline or do we order for winding up?”

However on both the parties agreeing for the adjournment, the court granted a 3 weeks breathing period for the airline and directed the matter be listed after that.

Credit Suisse AG, a Switzerland based stock corporation, moved Madras High Court for  SpiceJet. According to Suisse, the airline had failed to honor its commitment to pay r $24 million it had raised from them for maintenance, repairing and overhauling of the aircraft engines and components

Suisse’s plea before a single judge of Madras High Court sought for winding up of SpiceJet under the provisions of the Companies Act, 1956 and for the appointment of an Official Liquidator. The Single Judge had on December 6, 2021 allowed the petition thereby paving way for the winding up for the airline. The single judge had  however suspended the operation of his order of winding up for a limited period subject to the company to paying $5 million to avail interim relief.

Recently, the division bench of the Madras High Court had upheld the December 6 verdict of a single judge ordering the winding up of SpiceJet Limited and directing the official liquidator attached to the High Court to take over the assets of the company.

The division bench by its order on January 11 however, extended the operation of the interim stay granted by the single judge, till January 28 to enable the airliner to prefer an appeal before the Supreme Court. SpiceJet moved the division bench against single judge order. The airline has thus approached the  Supreme Court for a stay of the order of the division bench of Madras High Court.

Case title: SpiceJet Vs Credit Suisse