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), established under Section 7 of the Act, 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. ‘Cartel’ has been defined under the Act to include ‘an association of producers, sellers, distributors, traders or service providers who, by agreement among 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 article 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.