In Independent Sugar Corporation Ltd. v. Girish Sriram Juneja, a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court confronted a deceptively narrow question: must the Competition Commission of India clear a combination before the Committee of Creditors votes on a resolution plan, or can that clearance follow afterwards? By a majority of two to one, the Court read the proviso to Section 31(4) of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 as mandatory, holding that the word “prior” fixes a sequence the Committee cannot rearrange. This comment studies how the ruling resets the relationship between competition regulation and insolvency resolution. It argues that the majority has the better of the textual argument, but that its reasoning leaves the practical friction with the Code’s time-bound design largely untouched. The dissent’s worry about workability is genuine, yet the cure it proposes would quietly drain a deliberate legislative safeguard. The comment suggests that the durable answer lies in procedural reform rather than in straining statutory language, and reflects on what the decision means for the much-cited commercial wisdom doctrine.
 

Keywords: Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code; Competition Act