I Never Filed a Claim in My Builder's CIRP and the Plan Is Approved: Is My Flat Gone?

If you never filed a claim in your builder's CIRP and the National Company Law Tribunal has approved the resolution plan, your claim against the builder company is extinguished except where the plan provides for buyers like you, so whether your flat is gone turns on one clause of that plan. Section 31(6) of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016, inserted by the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) Act, 2026 and in force from 26 May 2026, extinguishes claims against the company for the period before approval "unless otherwise provided in the resolution plan", as the Supreme Court had already held in 2021. What is new this year is the other side. Since 25 February 2026 the information memorandum must list allottees who appear in the company's books or the RERA authority's records but never filed, and the plan must provide for their treatment. Read that clause first. Beyond it, little is left: an appeal if the time has not run, a recall on narrow grounds, and any claims you have against the promoters, directors and guarantors personally, which section 31(6) leaves untouched.

Part of the RERA and homebuyer disputes practice at S Jain & Attorneys, Bangalore.

This page is for a Bengaluru homebuyer who paid towards a flat, never sent a claim to the interim resolution professional or the resolution professional, and has just learnt that the tribunal has approved a plan. If the process is still running and you have only missed the date in the public announcement, start with "If you have missed the date" in our guide to filing Form CA. If you did file and the admitted sum is wrong, see a claim admitted below what you paid.

Where you stand once the plan is approved, and what is left:

I never filed a claim and the plan is approved: is my flat gone?

As against the builder company, yes, unless the plan provides for you. Section 31(1) of the Code makes an approved plan binding on the corporate debtor, its creditors, its guarantors and the other stakeholders involved in it, and because the Explanation to section 5(8)(f) deems money raised from an allottee to have the commercial effect of a borrowing, which makes it a financial debt, you are a creditor bound by the plan whether or not you filed. Section 31(6) then extinguishes claims against the company for the period before approval and bars proceedings to recover them. Your claims under the agreement for sale, your RERA claims against the company and your refund claim are all caught by it, except as far as the plan keeps them.

For the flat itself, everything turns on how the plan deals with the units. The plan the Indore bench approved for JSM Devcons on 5 April 2024 completes the project and hands the flats to homebuyers once they pay the balance due, and it covers the 351 homebuyers whose claims the resolution professional admitted. A buyer who never filed is not on that list. When two buyers there, who said they had paid in full, asked the tribunal in 2026 to stop the sale of their unit and register it in their names, it dismissed the application on 13 July 2026 as not maintainable.

Key takeaway. Once the tribunal approves the plan, the plan is the whole of your claim against the builder company. If it has a clause for allottees who did not file, that clause is what you can insist on. If it has none, section 31(6) has extinguished the claim against the company, and what survives is any claim you have against the people behind it.

Why does approval wipe out a claim I never filed?

Because the Code is built so that whoever takes control of the company knows its liabilities on the day it does. In the Essar Steel case, decided on 15 November 2019, the Supreme Court said that a successful resolution applicant cannot suddenly be faced with undecided claims after its plan is accepted, which it called a hydra head popping up, and that all claims must be submitted to and decided by the resolution professional. In Ghanashyam Mishra and Sons v Edelweiss Asset Reconstruction Company, decided on 13 April 2021, three judges held that on the date of approval all claims which are not part of the plan stand extinguished and no one may initiate or continue proceedings on them, the aim being to freeze all claims so that the applicant starts on a clean slate.

Parliament has now written that rule into the Code. Section 31(6), in force from 26 May 2026 under notification S.O. 2625(E), extinguishes any claim against the corporate debtor and its assets prior to the date of approval unless otherwise provided in the plan, and bars continuing or instituting proceedings on such claims. Its Explanation III applies the rule to every plan approved since the Code came into force, except matters that have attained finality, so an older approval is covered too. Approval orders may say the same in terms: the Indore order of 5 April 2024 declared that unpaid liabilities and claims not filed with the resolution professionals before approval, and those not included in the plans, would stand extinguished.

Four rules now decide what is left of a claim you never filed.

Did the plan have to provide for me even though I never filed?

It had to if the information memorandum listed you, and a memorandum prepared after 25 February 2026 must list you if your booking shows in the company's books or the RERA authority's records. The amendment the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India issued that day, in force on its publication in the Gazette, added clause (ja) to regulation 36(2) of the CIRP Regulations. The memorandum must now carry details of all allottees, including their names, amounts due and units allotted, whose claims are reflected in the books of accounts of the corporate debtor or in the records of the Real Estate Regulatory Authority but who have not submitted their claims to the resolution professional. The same amendment inserted regulation 38A: in respect of a real estate project, where the memorandum includes such allottees, the resolution plan shall provide for their treatment.

The two rules fit together because section 30(1) of the Code requires a plan to be prepared on the basis of the information memorandum, so a buyer absent from it is invisible to whoever writes the plan. In Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority's case, 2024 INSC 102, decided on 12 February 2024, the Supreme Court described the resolution professional as under a statutory obligation to collate data from the claims put before him and from information gathered from the records, including those the company maintains, and said that data becomes part of the information memorandum.

Read the limits too. Regulation 38A requires a treatment but does not prescribe one, and what each class receives remains the committee of creditors' commercial decision. On our reading, a plan that ignores listed buyers breaches regulation 38A, while one that refunds them a fraction of what they paid at least satisfies its wording. We found no tribunal decision yet applying regulation 38A.

My builder's process began before February 2026: does the new rule help me?

Only if your plan was still being prepared when the rule arrived, because the amendment has no transitional clause. Regulation 36(1) requires the information memorandum by the ninety-fifth day of the process "and its subsequent updates thereof", so on our reading a memorandum prepared or updated after 25 February 2026 had to carry the new list. A plan the tribunal approved before that date was not written under these rules.

Before 2026 the idea came from the Appellate Tribunal, and timing was its weakness. In 2022, in the K.V. Developers insolvency, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal said that buyers who could not file but whose claims were reflected in the company's records ought to have been in the information memorandum and dealt with in the plan, and it directed an addendum to a plan still awaiting approval. In 2025 INSC 1086 the Supreme Court said that buyers had rightly relied on that passage. On 17 October 2025, in the Today Homes Noida insolvency, the Appellate Tribunal applied it to buyers who filed late, several of them years after the deadline, but whose allotments and payments were in the company's records and the resolution professional's own affidavit, and ruled that they must be treated like the other homebuyers in the class and not under the plan's fifty percent refund clause. That plan had been sent back for resubmission and was not yet approved.

For a buyer who never filed, approval shuts the door. In its order of 13 July 2026, the Indore bench declined to extend that reasoning to two JSM Devcons buyers in that position, distinguishing the K.V. Developers ruling as one where the tribunal had not yet approved the plan. They came about two years after the approval of 5 April 2024, and the tribunal, noting that the invitation to bidders in Form G had been published three times, found that they had wilfully ignored and lost sight of the process.

Deadline warning. The records argument works, if at all, for buyers who press it before the tribunal approves the plan. After approval, a buyer who never filed is held to whatever the plan says.

What do plans provide for buyers who never filed?

Whatever the committee approved, and in the two plans whose clauses for such buyers the judgments quote, it was a partial refund, not a flat. In the Puma Realtors plan considered in 2025 INSC 1086, clause 18.4(xi) covered allottees who had not filed, whose claims were not verified, or whose verified claims were not communicated to the resolution applicant, and refunded fifty percent of the principal deposited. In the Today Homes Noida plan, which the tribunal sent back in 2024, such buyers were to be dealt with at the applicant's sole discretion after verification of their documents, with half the principal refunded at the end of the twelfth quarter from the plan's start date, compensation and interest written off, and all refunds and compensation to allottees and decree holders capped at Rs 6 crore in aggregate.

Look for a window as well as a percentage. The Today Homes Noida clause dealt with such allottees till the completion of the project, and wrote off any claim received after the refunds from the fund had been paid out, so it was drafted to leave a door open after approval and to fix when it closed. Because section 31(6) extinguishes only what the plan does not provide for, a window that the plan itself opens is, on our reading, one you can insist the applicant honour.

To find your clause, start with the approval order. The Board's website carries the tribunal's orders process by process, and an approval order may set out the salient features of the plan, as the Indore order of 5 April 2024 did. Then write to the successful resolution applicant, which carries out the plan, and to the monitoring committee if one exists. Regulation 38(4) asks the committee of creditors to consider a monitoring committee to supervise implementation, and it reports to the tribunal every quarter. Ask the authorised representative of the allottees' class whether the information memorandum listed you.

Can I still file a claim now that the plan is approved?

No regulation lets you, because every late window shuts before the vote on the plan. Regulation 12(1) allows a claim after the date in the public announcement up to the issue of the request for resolution plans or ninety days from the insolvency commencement date, whichever is later, with reasons for delay beyond ninety days. Regulation 13(1B) then covers claims received up to seven days before the meeting of creditors that votes on the plan, which the resolution professional sorts into acceptable and non-acceptable, and regulation 13(1C) sends an acceptable one to the committee for its recommendation on inclusion and treatment in the plan, and to the tribunal for condonation of delay. While a process is running, those windows are covered in our guides to filing Form CA and to Form F or Form CA. After approval, a Form CA sent to the resolution professional has nowhere to go: the process he ran has ended, and the claim it describes is extinguished unless the plan provides for it.

Common mistake. Sending a fresh Form CA to the resolution professional, or filing a K-RERA complaint against the builder company, after the plan is approved. Neither revives a claim that section 31(6) has extinguished. Spend the effort on the plan's clause for buyers who did not file and on any claim against the people behind the company.

The resolution professional listed my claim late. Am I a buyer who never filed?

No, and the difference can decide whether you get the flat, so check the list of creditors on the Board's website first. In 2025 INSC 1086, a judgment of 9 September 2025, the buyers' claim was resubmitted at the resolution professional's invitation after the committee's vote, then verified and published in that list well before the tribunal approved the plan. Such a claim, the Supreme Court held, has full legal recognition in the process, so the residuary clause, meant for claims not filed or not verified, could not be applied to it, and the Court ordered conveyance and possession within two months, while stating that it was not admitting a fresh claim beyond the plan. If you are on the list and the applicant treats you as a non-filer, apply to the tribunal for directions, as those buyers did. How such a challenge runs is in our guide on challenging an approved resolution plan.

Can I appeal against the approval, or ask the NCLT to recall it?

An appeal only within thirty days, and a recall only on narrow grounds. Anyone aggrieved by the approval order may go to the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal under section 61(1), within the thirty days of section 61(2) plus at most fifteen for sufficient cause, and only on the five grounds in section 61(3), one being that the plan breaches criteria the Board has specified. On our reading, a plan approved under the 2026 rules that ignores allottees the information memorandum listed fails regulation 38A and so section 30(2)(f), and that failure is a ground under section 61(3)(v). Section 61(6), added in 2026, sets the Appellate Tribunal a three-month limit for deciding the appeal. Assume the thirty days began when the order was pronounced, since a buyer who never filed typically learns of the approval long after the forty-five days have run.

Recall, the tribunal's power to undo its own order, is narrower still. In Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority's case the Supreme Court held that the power exists, preserved by rule 11 of the NCLT Rules, 2016, but is to be exercised sparingly and not as a tool to rehear the matter, ordinarily on limited grounds such as an order without jurisdiction, a party aggrieved not served with notice of the proceedings, or an order obtained by misrepresentation of facts or fraud resulting in gross failure of justice. Not knowing of the process fits that list badly. The Indore bench held that the process runs through statutory public announcements that stakeholders are expected to track, and it rejected an allegation that the buyers' details had been suppressed, because a bare assertion, without evidence that the resolution professional had been put on notice of their claim, could not displace the rule that the door shuts once the tribunal approves the plan.

Can I still take the builder to K-RERA or the consumer commission?

Not against the company for what it owed you before approval. The moratorium ends when the plan is approved, under section 31(3)(a) and the proviso to section 14(4), but section 31(6)(b) bars continuing or instituting proceedings against the corporate debtor or its assets on the basis of the extinguished claims, including proceedings to assess them. A K-RERA complaint against the builder company for delay interest or a refund for the years before approval is caught by that bar, unless the plan keeps such claims alive.

The people behind the company are a different matter. Explanation I to section 31(6) says that nothing in the section affects a claim or any proceeding in respect of a person who was a promoter or in the management or control of the corporate debtor, a guarantor of the corporate debtor, or any person jointly or jointly and severally liable with it. Whether a consumer complaint can continue against promoters, directors and landowners is the subject of our guide on homebuyer rights when the builder is in insolvency, and who is personally liable turns on your agreement and the facts. A claim the plan does provide for, such as a refund under its clause for buyers who did not file, is one to take to the tribunal that approved the plan, which section 60(5) empowers to decide any question of law or fact arising out of or in relation to the insolvency resolution.

What if the plan is not carried out, or collapses?

Section 33 is the route back. Where the company contravenes an approved plan, section 33(3) lets any person other than the company whose interests are prejudicially affected apply to the tribunal, which under section 33(4) passes a liquidation order if the contravention is made out or, since 26 May 2026, may instead reinstate the insolvency process. On our reading, a buyer the plan provides for is plainly prejudiced by its breach, while a buyer it left with nothing will struggle to show that.

If liquidation is ordered, regulation 16(1) of the Liquidation Process Regulations, in its form from 2 June 2026, gives a stakeholder whose claim was not submitted during the insolvency process fourteen days from the liquidation commencement date to submit it. We found no ruling on whether a claim an approved plan extinguished revives when the plan fails, so treat those fourteen days as a deadline, not an assurance. The rest of a builder's liquidation is in what happens to your flat and claim in liquidation.

Four limits now decide what you can still do once the plan is approved.

Step by step: what to do in the next two weeks

1. Get the approval order and note the date it was pronounced. The Board's website lists the tribunal's orders by company. Mark two dates in your calendar: thirty days and forty-five days after it. Apply for a certified copy the same day.
2. Read the order's summary of the plan and find the category for allottees who did not file a claim, or whose claims were not verified.
3. Check whether your name is in the list of creditors on the Board's website, and ask the authorised representative of the allottees' class whether the information memorandum listed you.
4. Assemble the allotment letter, the agreement for sale, every receipt with the matching debit in your bank statement, and any record of your booking with the RERA authority.
5. Write to the successful resolution applicant and the monitoring committee, cite the plan clause, enclose the papers and ask for the treatment the clause gives. Retain proof of delivery.
6. If the applicant refuses, or treats a verified claim as unfiled, apply to the tribunal for directions under section 60(5).
7. If the appeal period has not run and the plan ignores allottees the information memorandum listed, decide on an appeal together with the other buyers in the same position.
8. In parallel, take advice on claims against the promoters, directors and guarantors, which section 31(6) leaves untouched.

What will it cost, and how long will it take?

Reading the approval order and writing to the applicant and the monitoring committee cost only the time needed to assemble your papers. An appeal, or an application to the tribunal for directions under a plan clause, is contested, and its fees and duration turn on the hearings it takes, usually months. Buyers in the same position can divide the cost of one application. A consumer case against promoters and directors runs on the consumer commission's own timetable. These are indicative ranges only.

Where do buyers who never filed go wrong?

The pattern we see is a buyer who learns of the insolvency late and wastes the first months at the wrong door. The usual first step is a long recall application built on not having known of the process, which the Indore bench treated as no answer to the public announcements. Meanwhile the steps that can still produce something are put off: reading the approval order and the plan's clause for buyers who did not file, checking whether the information memorandum or the list of creditors carries the buyer's name, and assembling the receipts and bank statements the applicant will want to verify. A K-RERA complaint against the company is filed and stalls on section 31(6). Any claims against the promoters, directors and guarantors, which the 2026 Act does not touch, are pursued only at the end. In these files our RERA and homebuyer disputes practice starts with the approval order and the plan's category for buyers who did not file, because those two documents decide what is left.

Frequently Asked Questions

This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Consult a qualified advocate for advice on your specific situation.

Related Guides

Claims, applications and appeals for allottees in a builder's insolvency are handled in our RERA and homebuyer disputes practice, and the sale deed and title questions that follow in our property and real estate law practice.

• Form CA: How a Homebuyer Files a Claim When the Builder Is in NCLT
• Form F or Form CA? The Homebuyer's Claim Form in a Builder's Insolvency, and How to Fix a Wrong Filing
• Builder in Insolvency? Homebuyer Rights After the Supreme Court's Mantri Ruling (2026)