IL&FS Engineering and Construction Company Limited (IECCL) is an Indian infrastructure builder that was once a multi-sector EPC (Engineering, Procurement, and Construction) contractor but is now a company in survival mode, fighting to finish its last projects and restart its business while trapped inside the unresolved collapse of its parent, IL&FS. Born as Maytas Infra and later absorbed into the IL&FS group, its world was upended overnight in 2018 when the group’s defaults led the government to take control, freezing its bank guarantees, halting its projects, and cutting it off from new work for over six years. Everything the company does now-executing a handful of legacy contracts, pursuing claims in arbitration, and grasping at subcontracting work-is shaped by a single recurring approach: it is a contractor with the skills but without the financial standing to bid, so it survives by completing what it started and partnering with others who can carry the balance sheet.
Business segments
A single engine running on residual momentum-one construction business with a dwindling order book, kept alive by subcontracting arrangements and the slow grind of arbitration.
1. Construction and Infrastructure Development: the last contracts on the books
The company is an EPC contractor that builds roads, railways, pipelines, and power lines for government and private clients, but it has not won a new project on its own balance sheet in over six years-every rupee of its remaining order book comes from work secured before the crisis or from subcontracts where a stronger partner holds the main contract.
- Builds to order, not for stock - it earns revenue by constructing assets for clients under fixed-scope EPC and item-rate contracts, recognising income over time using the percentage-of-completion method, which means it books revenue as costs are incurred rather than when the client pays.
- The order book has shrunk to near zero - as of March 2026, the total unexecuted order book stood at just Rs. 12.89 Crore, split between a small road contract and an oil-and-gas contract, down from Rs. 1,370 Crore in March 2020, because the company cannot bid for new work without the bank guarantees that its negative net worth makes impossible to obtain.
- Subcontracting is the only door left open - unable to win contracts directly, the company now takes on back-to-back subcontracts from main contractors who have the financial credentials it lacks, such as the Rs. 414 Crore assignment to design and build an elevated viaduct and ten stations for the Jaipur Metro, where it holds 49% of the work under a consortium lead.
- Arbitration is a second, uncertain revenue stream - with many of its pre-crisis projects terminated by clients, the company has turned to legal claims to recover costs, winning awards against GAIL for two pipeline projects where the termination was ruled illegal, and securing a favourable award in a road-project joint venture that is now under appeal in the Delhi High Court.
- Projects run on subcontractors and joint ventures - the company relies on a network of back-to-back subcontractors and unincorporated joint-venture partners to execute work, with a dedicated contracts department managing claims and arbitration alongside the legal team, while its own plant and machinery consists mainly of construction equipment and shuttering material depreciated over six years.
Group structure and partners
The company is a subsidiary of the government-controlled IL&FS, with a web of dormant subsidiaries and joint ventures that are mostly legacies of its pre-crisis past, and its fate is tied to a resolution plan that has been approved by lenders but is still awaiting court clearance.
- Controlled by IL&FS, which has a board appointed under NCLT supervision - the holding company, Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Limited, retains control over the composition of IECCL’s board, and since October 2018 the IL&FS board itself has been superseded by a new board with members nominated by the Government of India under NCLT supervision.
- A resolution plan is stuck in court - secured lenders have approved a resolution plan with an overwhelming majority, but it remains under consideration by the NCLT in Mumbai, and until it is finalised the company is not settling any liabilities that existed before the October 15, 2018 cut-off date.
- Seven subsidiaries, mostly inactive - the company owns six wholly-owned domestic subsidiaries with names like Angeerasa Greenfields and Maytas Metro, plus a 55% stake in Maytas Infra Saudi Arabia Company, which has been non-operational since the Mecca tragedy and whose financial information the company cannot access; it has applied to the RBI to write off that investment.
- A thicket of joint ventures from another era - the company is a partner in over twenty unincorporated joint ventures and associations of persons, most of them formed for specific projects, with names like NCC-Maytas, MEIL Maytas KBL, and L&T KBL Maytas reflecting the consortium structures that were once its normal way of working.
- A recent stake sale bought some breathing room - in 2023, the company completed the sale of its preference shares and debentures in Bangalore Elevated Tollway Private Limited, receiving Rs. 64.54 Crore that has been set aside and can only be used once the NCLT approves the resolution process.