The Government has formed a Personal Bankruptancy panel under the chairmanship of Justice B N Srikrishna.
The 10-member panel including Justice B.N Srikrishna will advise and provide professional support to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI).
The regulatory body IBBI headed by M S Sahoo, which is drafting the norms for filing bankruptcy by individuals and help them start afresh, a clause that is contained in the law but is yet to be operationalised.
The law has set a threshold of over Rs 1,000 for which individuals can file for bankruptcy protection. This has to be filed with debt recovery tribunals and the process is seen to be inadequate. These tribunals are already over-worked and are seen to have been a failure in delivering results for banks, which had approached them for recovery of loans from companies and individuals. This is unlike companies, where a special legal platform in the form of the National Company Law Tribunal has been set up.
Apart from Justice Srikrishna, the other members include, former SEBI Chairman C B Bhave, sociologist Dipankar Gupta, former chairperson of National Commission for Women Poornima Advani, former National Housing Bank chairman R V Verma, principal economic adviser Sanjeev Sanyal, lawyer and president of the Society of Insolvency Professionals Sumant Batra, CEO of the Institute of Insolvency Professionals Sunil Batra and Prithivi Haldea of Prime Database.
