NATIONAL COMPANY LAW TRIBUNAL (NCLT) has approved the repayment plan of just Rs 6.25 crore out of the admitted claims of Rs 22,006 crore in the personal insolvency proceedings of the Zee Group founder Subhash Chandra. The plan was approved on August 25, 2026, after a split verdict between two-members was referred to the third judicial member Nilesh Sharma, who cleared it under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code’s (IBC) Section 114. In the proceedings, the majority of creditors reportedly supported the repayment plan professed by Chandra.
However, after the plan’s approval several banks flagged their concerns regarding potential biases in voting. This was because at least five entities, which held 61.78% of the votes, backed the repayment plans, and are closely linked to Chandra as associates or related parties. According to the Indian Express, nearly 23 creditors participated in the voting process, of which the opposing banks got a vote share of only 19.186%. Reportedly, LIC Housing Finance (LICHFL), HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, Canara Bank, RBL Bank and Union Bank voted against it.
Subhash Chandra is the founder of Zee, which is part of the parent group, Essel. He was that big-shot businessman, who sought to proliferate the television-based broadcasting channels in the Indian market. This began in 1992, when he launched Zee TV—India’s first private satellite TV station which made Indian content available across the globe. Along with these, he also forayed into the ownership of amusement parks, took on road-construction contracts, power transmission as well as real estate businesses. In 2019, he had a net worth of $2.5 billion according to Forbes.
Alongside his economic and financial ventures, Subhash Chandra also made his foray into the political sphere, when he formally entered the Rajya Sabha in 2016 representing Haryana. He filed his nomination as an independent candidate, but was heavily backed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Congress and the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) had supported RK Anand—another independent candidate. Despite that, Chandra has always tried to balance either side, as he went on to support Congress Candidate Chander Prakash against BJP’s Bhavya Bishnoi—the son of senior BJP leader Kuldeep Bishnoi—in the contest for the Adampur constituency.
His multiple ventures did not stop here, as he publicly went on to support Independent candidate Savitri Jindal—who later extended her support to the ruling BJP—in her campaign for the Hisar constituency. Expressing his support for the candidate, Chandra wrote on X, “Although I come from a BJP-supporting family, I am still appealing for votes for an Independent candidate. Supporting BJP is my personal belief, but the people of Hisar and this city are mine too, so I have a duty towards it as well. Therefore, I earnestly request the voters of Hisar to vote for Savitri Ji.”
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It is clear that Subhash Chandra had been ‘running with the hare and hunting with the hounds’ for long. And perhaps, it were these strategic pivots that helped him steer clear in one of the most burning cases in the history of India’s financial and economic affairs.
The Essel Group had accumulated huge amounts of debt from its creditors for a long time. At the group level, Essel had a total debt of Rs 17,174 crore, of which Rs 11,456 crore was infrarelated debt, as reported by The Economic Times in March 13, 2019. This infrarelated debt covered three major verticals—power transmission, solar and roads.
While the case reached its climax until recently, one can find its roots back to 2016. In 2016, nearly a decade back, a Rs 170-crore loan had been taken by Vivek Infracon Pvt Ltd. with Subhash Chandra as a personal guarantee. In the financial and legal parlance, a personal guarantor is someone who vouches for a borrower, guaranteeing repayment in case of any defaults in the same. It was this transaction, which triggered the entire insolvency proceedings against Chandra. The loan defaulted in February 2019, and Indiabulls got back at Chandra as the personal guarantor. In January-February 2022, a demand notice was served by Indiabulls, and they filed an application under Section 95 of the Insolvency code before the NCLT in order to initiate proceedings against him. Section 95 of the Insolvency code allows a financial institution or a creditor to initiate an insolvency resolution process against the personal guarantor.
This was followed by a political debacle, as Chandra lost his Rajya Sabha seat in 2022.
However, the issue had not taken its glaring shape yet, as an interim order of the Supreme court halted the insolvency proceedings. Ultimately in April 2024, the insolvency proceedings were admitted following the Supreme courts’ clearance, but the pandoras box was yet to open.
As the formal proceedings of the NCLT began, multiple lenders placed their claims against Chandra and his borrowings on personal guarantee. Chandra had taken loans from a number of creditors alongside Indiabulls, such as the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC), HDFC Bank, Canara Bank, Axis Bank, RBL Bank, IndusInd Bank, and the Union Bank, by the virtue of being a personal guarantor himself. This led to the creditor’s claims reaching a sky-high amount of Rs 22,006 crore.
The case continued under the national tribunal, and it was on August 25, 2026, that the three-member bench approved the repayment plan of Chandra, which stood at Rs 6.25 crore against the borrowings of Rs 22,006 crore.
The approval has brought sharp reactions from the civil society as well as the lenders, with some of them showcasing their dissent over what they describe to be ‘unviable payouts.’ The incident has garnered its own story-board, with narratives coming in from different directions. In a recent post on X by the LIC, they expressed their opposition to this given approval. “LIC Housing Finance Limited (LIC HFL) and other public financial institutions, including Canara Bank and Union Bank of India (UK) Ltd., voted against the Repayment Plan proposed by Dr. Subhash Chandra. The Plan was ultimately approved on account of the votes cast in favour of the Repayment Plan by the other Financial Creditors, aggregating to 80.81%. LIC HFL will immediately file an appeal before the Hon’ble NCLAT, along with the other public financial institutions”, their post on X read.
Netizens on social media have expressed their stiff dissent, often claiming BJP’s close connection with Chandra as the alleged reason for this uneven judgment.
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Political parties too, have expressed their discontent with the given judgement. Taking his opinions on X, leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi wrote that the NCLT has come to be none other than the ‘Neta-Company Loot Tribunal.'
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM) also issued its official statement by vehemently criticizing the entire issue. They also cited a response from an RTI appeal which noted that the Loan Recovery Rate is 74 per cent for the small borrowers (Rs.1 crore and below) and only 14.5 per cent for the big borrowers (Rs.100 crore and above).
This entire incident raises various nuanced questions regarding insolvency, debts and the management of a country’s finance rules. However, it points towards one question very specifically: are our Loan-repayment rules strong enough to ensure that powerful defaulting parties are held accountable?
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