The fast-track route under Section 233 has been quietly transformed over the past year. The September 2025 Amendment Rules widened eligibility and brought demergers expressly within the route, and the Corporate Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026 proposes to rationalise the approval thresholds and consolidate multi-State schemes before a single bench. On its face, a meaningful liberalisation of intra-group restructuring.
My latest article, as published on Taxsutra, inquires whether the route is, in substance, as efficacious as it now appears. The reform has been delivered in stages, by different instruments, and the neighbouring frameworks have not kept pace. The members’ threshold has been re-based while the creditors’ has not, the concessional stamp duty articles in several States still point only to the Tribunal route, and the tax definition of a qualifying demerger continues to withhold neutrality from a fast-track demerger, an exclusion the legislative record indicates was retained deliberately. The route is more accessible than it was, but for a meaningful class of transactions it remains one that ends before the Tribunal in any event.