The Delhi High Court held that the petitioners Handoo&Handoo Legal Consultants and Cosmos Advance Diagnostic cannot be denied the benefit of the LLP Settlement Scheme, 2020.
The petitioners filed the application praying that they may be allowed to avail the benefit of LLP Settlement Scheme, 2020 dated March 4, 2020, read with the subsequent modification thereto vide Circular dated March 30, 2020.
The central Government in exercise of its power under Section 460 of the Companies Act, 2013 decided to introduce a scheme namely “LLP Settlement Scheme, 2020”, by allowing a One-time condonation of delay in filing statutorily required documents with the Registrar by the Limited Liability Partnerships.
The Scheme states that the same is applicable to any “defaulting LLP” for the documents which were due to be filed till October 31, 2019.
The petitioners alleged that they could not upload the statutory forms required under the Act to be uploaded by them due to a glitch in the system of the respondent’s authority itself.
This Court, by its order dated December 6, 2018, observed that there are a large number of LLPs, which had not filed Form-3 at the initial stage. Therefore, it may be apposite for the respondent authority to consider a one time measure to enable all parties to complete the statutory filings.
The plea of the petitioners is that they have been denied the benefit of the Scheme only on the ground that they uploaded the forms pursuant to the order.
The single-judge bench of Justice Nawin Chawla held that the petitioners are entitled to the benefit of the Scheme and they shall not be denied the same only on the ground that their documents were uploaded pursuant to the order passed by this Court in the present petitions, prior to October 31, 2019.
“This, in my opinion, cannot be a valid ground for denying the benefit of the Scheme to the petitioners. The petitioners cannot be denied the benefit of the Scheme as such denial would be totally arbitrary and unreasonable. The petitioner(s) cannot be put in a position worse than those who never challenged the position prevailing before the announcement of the Scheme, before this Court,” the court said.
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