“ 43. It will be seen from a reading of Section 8(2)(a) that the corporate debtor shall, within a period of 10 days of the receipt of the demand notice, bring to the notice of the operational creditor the existence of a “dispute”. We have seen that “dispute” as defined in Section 5(6) includes a suit or arbitration proceeding relating to certain matters. Again, under Section 8(2)(a), the corporate debtor may, in the alternative, disclose the pendency of a suit arbitration proceedings filed before the receipt of the demand notice. It is clear therefore, that at least in the case of an operational creditor, “default” must be non-payment of amounts that have become due and payable in law. The “dispute” or pendency of a suit or arbitration proceedings would necessarily bring in the Limitation Act, for if a suit or arbitration proceeding is time-barred, it would be liable to be dismissed. This again is an important pointer to the fact that when the expression “due” and “due and payable” occur in Sections 3(11) and 3(12) of the Code, they refer to a “default” which is non-payment of a debt that is due in law i.e. that such debt is not barred by the law of limitation. It is well settled that where the same word occurs in a similar context, the draftsman of the statute intends that the word bears the same meaning throughout the statute (see Bhogilal Chunilal Pandya v. State of Bombay 1959 Supp (1) SCR 310, AIR 1959 SC 356, 1959 Cri LJ 389, Supp SCR at pp. 313-14). It is thus clear that the expression “default” bears the same meaning in Sections 7 and 8 of the Code, making it clear that the corporate insolvency resolution process against a corporate debtor can only be initiated either by a financial or operational creditor in relation to debts which have not become timebarred.
