14.Faced with this, Mr. Tulzapurkar relies on the decisions of
this Court in Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd v National Organic
Chemical Industries Ltd. & Ors.1 and in Hy-Line International v
C&M Hy-Line Farms P. Ltd., In Re: C&M Farming Ltd.,2 to say that
at the very least, following the mandate of Section 557 of the
Companies Act, 1956, ICICI Bank Ltd must be allowed to intervene
as it is a secured creditor. Bharat Petroleum says that there is no
reason why the mandate of Section 557 should not be followed at the
stage of admission, and a creditor be asked to wait till a final order
on the petition before he is heard. Hy-Line International, a later
decision by a few months, relies on Bharat Corporation but states the
law slightly differently, in that it says that a court has the discretion
to allow interested persons to participate in the proceedings so as to
oppose the admission of the petition. Thus, secured creditors such
as ICICI Bank can be permitted to intervene and be heard even at
the stage of admission. I believe the legal position is correctly stated
in Hy-Line International. But the emphasis here is on the word
‘discretion’, and that is clear from the language of Section 557 itself,
which says that “in all matters relating to the winding up of a
Company, the Court may” inter alia “have regard to the wishes of
creditors or contributories of the company, as proved to it by any
sufficient evidence.” Does this mean that a court is bound to allow
every creditor to intervene, no matter how it places its case? That
would, surely, do violence to the language of both the section, which
uses the word “may”, and the dictum in Hy-Line International,
which speaks of “discretion”. There is, clearly, a discretion in the
Court. That discretion must be exercised judiciously. I must see
whether the case is reasonable. More importantly, I must see what
