The Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) is an agency of the government of India, part of the Department of Financial Services of the Ministry of Finance. Its objective is to determine sickness of industrial companies and to assist in reviving those that may be viable and shutting down the others.The BIFR in practice often became a way of prolonging the life of inviable companies for years at taxpayer expense.
"One look at the track record of BIFR, and it doesn’t take a whiz [sic] to conclude that it is nothing but a graveyard of companies. A tiny fraction comes out healthy — only if the promoter is interested in putting it back up on its feet".
Defaulting companies are making a beeline for getting registered with the Board for Industrial and Financial Restructuring (BIFR) to get protection from being hauled up by aggrieved creditors before new norm for dealing with corporate sickness takes over under the protective umbrella of BIFR thereby scuttling efforts of creditors from getting remedial measures from the court.
Under SICA section 22, a company gets protection from all creditors while a revival process is on.
"SICA provides for an automatic stay and suspension of all kind of recovery and distressed proceedings (including debt recovery), once the reference filed by the company is registered in the BIFR. This could act as a huge impediment in debt recovery as the aforesaid provision could lead the BIFR to become a safe haven for defaulting companies. The companies could easily file reference with the BIFR, sometimes by manipulating their accounts to reflect net worth erosion, resulting in attracting this immunity against the recovery action by the creditors."
In the above given situation, one has to take a route of writ before high court based n the evidences and merits in his side.