Enforcement policies and guidance
i Statutory framework
The Competition Act 2002 (the Act), in conjunction with various regulations, forms the competition regime in India. While there are many sectoral regulators responsible for maintaining fair competition in their respective sectors, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), is the principal regulator for anticompetitive behaviour across all sectors.
Provisions of Section 3 of the Act and various regulations, particularly the Competition Commission of India (Lesser Penalty) Regulations 2009 (the Leniency Regulations), deal with anticompetitive agreements, including cartels. The term ‘cartel’ has been defined under the Act to include ‘an association of producers, sellers, distributors, traders or service providers who, by agreement amongst themselves, limit, control or attempt to control the production, distribution, sale or price of, or trade in goods or provision of services’. Therefore, to establish the existence of a cartel, the existence of an agreement needs to be proved first.
Please click here to read the full chapter by Farhad Sorabjee, Vaibhav Choukse, Ela Bali, and Aditi Khanna published in The Law Reviews.
Aditi is a competition / antitrust lawyer, who recently completed her post-graduation.