Litigation Search for Insolvency Professionals (IBC and NCLT)

Use Case · Insolvency & Bankruptcy

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

When an insolvency professional is appointed under the IBC, the corporate debtor rarely arrives with a clean slate. It may be the plaintiff in a dozen recovery suits, the defendant in as many more, and a party to a dispute sitting quietly in a High Court, a district court, a consumer forum, or a tribunal that nobody mentioned in the initial handover. Missing even one of these matters can put the moratorium, a claims verification, an avoidance application, or the resolution plan itself at risk. This page explains what an insolvency professional actually needs to search for, why it works differently from a routine litigation check, and how to build a complete picture inside a process that runs on a strict clock.

01Why litigation search works differently in an IBC process

A litigation search for an insolvency professional is not the same exercise as a lender running a background check before sanctioning a loan. It sits inside a live, time-bound process, and what it finds changes what the insolvency professional is legally required to do next.

The moratorium depends on knowing what to stay

Once the National Company Law Tribunal admits a corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP), Section 14 of the IBC puts a moratorium on suits and proceedings against the corporate debtor. That protection only works in practice if the insolvency professional actually knows which suits exist and where. A pending recovery suit in a district court two states away, or a writ petition sitting in a High Court, does not stop on its own. Someone has to identify it and bring the moratorium to the notice of that forum.

The corporate debtor is both plaintiff and defendant

Section 14 only bars proceedings against the corporate debtor. Suits filed by the corporate debtor, recovery actions, contract claims, arbitration references it initiated, continue to run and often need to be actively pursued. An insolvency professional who only searches for cases against the company can miss matters where the company itself has money or property at stake, which is a real value to the estate that should not be allowed to lapse on limitation or default of appearance.

The clock does not wait for a complete picture

An interim resolution professional has a matter of days to take custody and control of the corporate debtor, and the CIRP itself runs to a statutory outer limit. There is no equivalent of a slow, multi-week due diligence exercise here. The litigation picture has to be built fast, then kept current, because a matter that surfaces late, an admitted claim tied to a suit nobody flagged, a fraudulent transaction only visible once related litigation is read, can force the process to redo work it has already completed.

In an ordinary litigation check, a missed case is a gap in the report. In an IBC process, a missed case can undo a step the process has already taken.

02What an insolvency professional needs to find

A litigation search built for IBC work has to cover more ground than “does this company have pending cases”. Five categories matter, and each feeds a different statutory duty.

• Suits and proceedings against the corporate debtor: the matters the moratorium is meant to freeze. These need to be identified and the relevant courts informed, so a suit does not proceed to an order in ignorance of the CIRP.
• Suits and proceedings by the corporate debtor: recovery actions, contract claims, and arbitration references the company itself initiated. These are not stayed and often need continued representation, since Section 25 requires the resolution professional to represent the corporate debtor in judicial and other proceedings.
• Litigation tied to claims verification: when a creditor submits a claim, a related suit, an arbitral award, or a decree already on record helps confirm whether the claim is genuine and for how much. Litigation that never became a formal claim can also point to a liability the process should not overlook.
• Avoidance transaction litigation: preferential (Section 43), undervalued (Section 45), extortionate (Section 50), and fraudulent or wrongful trading (Section 66) transactions often leave a paper trail in older suits, related-party litigation, or enforcement proceedings. A search that only looks at the last two years can miss the history an avoidance application needs.
• Promoter, director, and resolution applicant background: litigation against promoters and directors is relevant to personal guarantor exposure and to Section 29A eligibility screening of resolution applicants. Committees of Creditors increasingly expect this check before approving a plan, not after.

03Where this litigation actually sits

The difficulty is not any single search. It is that a corporate debtor’s litigation history is scattered across forums that do not share data with each other or with NCLT.

None of these systems is aware of the others, so a search built for this work has to be run forum by forum, using the corporate debtor’s exact registered name, any prior names, and the names of its directors and promoters. The general method for this kind of search, MCA anchoring, name variants, and forum-by-forum coverage, is the same one used in how to find all litigation against a company in India, which is worth reading alongside this page for the mechanics.

04Building the picture inside IBC timelines

Because the clock is running from day one, the search needs a practical order of operations rather than an attempt to cover everything at once.

Start with what the outgoing management can hand over

On taking custody and control, request a full litigation register from the corporate debtor, including matters where the company is plaintiff, defendant, or a third party. Treat this as a starting list, not a complete one. Disclosure gaps are common, not always deliberate: matters involving a subsidiary, an old trade name, or a director personally are the ones most often left out.

Search where the money and the moratorium are, first

Prioritise NCLT and NCLAT for any related or competing insolvency applications, DRT for secured-creditor recovery actions, and the High Courts for any writ or arbitration matter connected to the company. These are the forums where a status change can most directly affect the CIRP timeline or the moratorium’s reach.

Then widen to district courts and tribunals

District court suits, cheque-dishonour complaints, consumer claims, and tax or regulatory tribunal matters take longer to surface but still feed claims verification and contingent liability estimates. The approach here mirrors the pending-litigation search used in transaction due diligence: confirm status forum by forum rather than relying on a single label. The steps in finding pending litigation for M&A due diligence in India on confirming a case is genuinely pending, not just showing up in a name search, apply directly here.

Cross-check avoidance and background litigation separately

Avoidance transaction work and Section 29A screening of resolution applicants need a longer look-back than the routine search, since the relevant transaction or relationship may be several years old. Budget this as a separate pass rather than folding it into the initial 14-day custody exercise.

A structured, sourced summary of what was found, and what was searched, is what most insolvency professionals end up producing internally in any case. For what that document should contain and how it is put together, see what a litigation search report is.

05Managing litigation once the moratorium is in force

Finding the litigation is the first half of the job. Keeping it managed for the rest of the CIRP or liquidation is the second, and it does not stop once the initial search is done.

Courts need to be told, not just aware

In practice, a moratorium does not always stop a matter automatically just because it exists on paper. Many courts and forums expect a formal intimation of the CIRP and the moratorium before they will stay a proceeding. An insolvency professional who has found every matter against the corporate debtor still has to make sure each relevant court or tribunal is actually informed.

Matters filed by the corporate debtor still need attention

Because these are not stayed, hearing dates, limitation periods, and procedural deadlines in matters where the corporate debtor is plaintiff keep running through the CIRP. Losing track of one of these can mean losing a recoverable asset for the estate.

Personal guarantor litigation is a separate track

The moratorium under Section 14 protects the corporate debtor, not its personal guarantors. Litigation and recovery action against directors or promoters who have given personal guarantees can continue in parallel, which matters both to lenders tracking their own recovery options and to the insolvency professional assessing the full picture around the corporate debtor.

06Where Claw fits

Claw is an all-in-one legaltech platform for Indian advocates, law firms, and corporate legal teams, combining AI-based case search, an AI legal assistant (Legal GPT), case management, and compliance automation across all Indian courts and tribunals. It is positioned as India’s first all-in-one legaltech platform of this kind.

For an insolvency professional, two parts of that are directly useful for this work. For related litigation history, appeals, and background checks on promoters or resolution applicants, Claw’s case search covers 30 crore plus judgements across 25 High Courts (1980 to 2026) and the Supreme Court (1950 to 2026), with semantic and AI-based search that returns verified, court-ready citations in under 5 seconds, useful when a suit connected to an avoidance transaction or a Section 29A check needs to be read in full rather than taken on a summary. For tracking matters once they are found, including at NCLT and NCLAT, Claw’s case management covers 8,200 plus courts and tribunals across India, with automatic status updates, WhatsApp and email alerts, and AI auto-compliance that reads a court or tribunal order and schedules the follow-up reminder, which helps make sure a fresh order or a changed hearing date does not sit unnoticed during a live CIRP.

Claw’s case search covers the Supreme Court and High Courts; searching NCLT, NCLAT, DRT, and other tribunal case records directly still means using the relevant tribunal portal or Claw’s tracking layer for status, not its judgement-search database. For the full method of building a company’s litigation picture from scratch, see how to find all litigation against a company.

07Frequently asked questions