Eminent Lawyers Anand S Pathak, Pallavi Shroff, Haigreve Khaitan, and Rahul Rai are on the Panel
New Delhi, Feb 7 (LAB) The Central government on Monday constituted a 16-member Committee on Digital Competition Law (CDCL) to examine the need for a separate law for digital markets.
The Committee will be headed by Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) Secretary Manoj Govil, four eminent lawyers and other government officials and experts.
The members of the committee are as follows:
Competition of Commission Chairperson;
Anand S Pathak, Managing Partner, Law Firm P&A Law Offices
Pallavi Shroff, Managing Partner, Law Firm Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co
Haigreve Khaitan, Senior Partner and Chairman of Law Firm Khaitan & Co
Rahul Rai , Partner & Co-founder Axiom5 Law Chambers
Dr Saurabh Srivastava, Indian Angel Network Chairman
Dr Aditya Bhattacharya, Professor of Economics
Harsha Vardhana Singh from IKDHVAJ Advisers LLP
And Joint Secretary (Competition), MCA.
The Committee will also have six members as invitees from other ministries, Niti Aayog, the Department of Commerce and the Department of Economic Affairs among others.
The MCA document said that the terms of reference of the committee will be to asses whether existing provisions in the Anti-Trust Act are sufficient to deal with the challenges that have emerged from the digital economy. The Committee will also examine the need for an ex-ante regulatory mechanism for digital markets through separate legislation.
Earlier on October 1, 2018, the Government constituted a Competition Law Review Committee to look into the existing provisions of the Competition Act framework and to recommend changes to tackle the new economic challenges emerging out of the digital economy.
The Committee filed its report which focused on issues such as deep discounting and pricing, platform neutrality, search and ranking preferencing, advertising policies and more.
The report recommended defining Big Tech companies as Systemically Important Digital Intermediaries (SIDIs) on the basis of their revenues, market capitalisation and end users.
The report was met with resistance by The Asia Internet Coalition, which is an industry body representing companies such as Google, Twitter, and Meta.
The Panel’s terms of reference included a review as to whether existing provisions of the Competition Act 2002 and the rules and regulations framed thereunder are sufficient to deal with the challenges that have emerged from the digital economy and to examine the need for an ex-ante regulatory mechanism for digital markets through separate legislation.
The Report of the Competition Law Review Committee was submitted to Union Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister.
Soon after the review committee filed its report, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance on the anti-competitive practices of Big Tech companies, the Union Government asked MCA to consider introducing a law to tackle such issues.
The Competition Act:
The Competition Act, 2002, as amended by the Competition (Amendment) Act, 2007, prohibits anti-competitive agreements, and abuse of dominant position by enterprises and regulates combinations (acquisition, acquiring of control and M&A), which cause or are likely to cause an appreciable adverse effect on competition within India.
Need for review:
During the past nine years, the size of the Indian Economy has grown immensely and today India is among the top five Economies in the World. In this context, it is essential that Competition Law is strengthened and re-calibrated to promote best practices that result in the country’s citizens achieving their aspirations and value for money.
MCA has now constituted a committee to look into the changes to be made in existing laws to tackle growing challenges in the Digital sector. /LAB/SNG