“16. We may hasten to add that under the “Framework for Revival and Rehabilitation of MSMEs”, the banks or creditors are required to identify the incipient stress in the account of the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, before their accounts turn into non-performing assets, by creating three sub-categories under the “Special Mention Account” Category, however, while creating such sub-categories, the Banks must have some authenticated and verifiable material with them as produced by the concerned MSME to show that loan account is of a Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise, classified and registered as such under the MSMED Act. The said Framework also enables the Micro, Small or Medium Enterprise to voluntarily initiate the proceedings under the said Framework, by filing an application along with the affidavit of an authorized person. Therefore, the stage of identification of incipient stress in the loan account of MSMEs and categorization under the Special Mention Account category, before the loan account of MSME turns into NPA is a very crucial stage, and therefore it would be incumbent on the part of the concerned MSME also to produce authenticated and verifiable documents/material for substantiating its claim of being MSME, before its account is classified as NPA. If that is not done, and once the account is classified as NPA, the banks i.e. secured creditors would be entitled to take the recourse to Chapter III of the SARFAESI Act for the enforcement of the security interest.”
