Jet Airways India Ltd., one of the country’s biggest carriers, is on life support. A bailout plan proposed by its lenders is in limbo, more than 80 percent of its fleet is grounded, staff salaries are delayed and it’s missed payments to banks and leasing companies, Bloomberg News reported. The clock is ticking for one of the country’s most visible companies at a sensitive time, with India’s general election just weeks away. The chairman of the debt-ravaged airline has resigned and emergency funding from lenders has yet to materialize.

You don’t adopt a modern insolvency law in the expectation of damaging the credibility of your central bank. But that’s just what has happened in India. The country’s Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a controversial 2018 directive from the Reserve Bank of India, which gave lenders a 180-day deadline to resolve nonperforming loans before having to refer the defaulting borrowers to a bankruptcy tribunal, a Bloomberg View reported. The verdict is a serious blow to the bank’s officials, who have been trying to tackle one of the world’s worst bad debt problems — with some early success.

Debt-laden Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) is “staring” at a 90 percent gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans of its main lending arm IL&FS Financial Services, the firm’s non-executive Chairman Uday Kotak said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. IL&FS, a major infrastructure financing and construction company, has a total debt of 910 billion rupees ($12.97 billion) and has been trying to sell its assets to repay debt after several defaults forced the government to overhaul its management.

Indian tycoons whose companies have fallen behind on loan repayments can breathe a bit easier now. The nation’s top court on Tuesday struck down a Reserve Bank of India directive that tightened rules for recasting delinquent accounts and mandated when they must be moved to bankruptcy tribunals, Bloomberg News reported. In doing this, the court restored to lenders some discretion in deciding how they want to resolve a loan once it’s in default.

India's Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) has arrested the former chairman of debt-laden Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) in connection with an ongoing investigation into the lender, a government official said on Monday, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Hari Sankaran, the former chairman and managing director of IL&FS, was arrested for "abusing his powers in IL&FS Financial Services Ltd through his fraudulent conduct" and will be in SFIO's custody until April 4, the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Troubled Jet Airways India Ltd. missed a $109 million loan repayment due to HSBC Bank this week, people with knowledge of the matter said. The money was due on March 28, and was part of a two-tranche facility totaling $140 million that the company took from HSBC in 2014, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the details are private, Bloomberg News reported. Jet had also missed payment on the other $31 million tranche that was due on March 11, and hasn’t repaid any of the loan, the people said.

During the 1990s, as their Essar group rolled out big investments in oil and steel, Shashi and Ravi Ruia exemplified a hard-charging generation of Indian businessmen riding a wave of liberalising reforms, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. In the next decade, the billionaire brothers became archetypes of a different sort. After a series of debt restructurings, they came to symbolise the impunity of Indian “promoters”, or controlling shareholders, who clung to control of their ailing businesses while persuading lenders to take heavy losses.

Cash-strapped Jet Airways Ltd on Monday took major steps towards closing a rescue deal with its lenders, with Chairman Naresh Goyal and his wife stepping down from the airline’s board, Reuters reported. Laden with debt of more than $1 billion and faced with an evaporating market value, Jet is banking on a bailout by its lenders as it became unable to pay banks, suppliers, pilots and lessors - several of whom have started terminating leases with the carrier.

A group of Indian state-run banks want Jet Airways’ embattled founder and Chairman Naresh Goyal to reduce his stake in the carrier to 10 percent, news channel CNBC-TV18 reported on Thursday, quoting sources, Reuters reported. “Banks want Goyal to bring his stake down to 10 percent, below the 17 percent envisaged in the bank-led provisional resolution plan (BLPRP),” sources told CNBC-TV18. The state-run banks are also pushing Goyal to step down, CNBC-TV18 added.

When India’s shadow lenders sneeze, lots of others catch a cold. Debt concerns have pushed funding costs for non-bank financing companies to multi-year highs in recent weeks, Bloomberg News reported. That’s bad news for all the borrowers who rely on the lenders in the world’s fastest-growing major economy -- from poor entrepreneurs getting micro loans for food delivery businesses to property tycoons looking to roll over debt that fueled a construction boom. Read more on that here.