Lok Sabha passes Competition Bill

The Lok Sabha passed amendments to the competition law for stricter compliance, including by empowering the antitrust regulator to impose penalties on global turnovers of erring firms, a move that could open the doors for harsher punishments on entities like Big Tech firms.

The changes, proposed as part of the Competition (Amendment) Bill, 2022 that was cleared amid pandemonium in the House, also include expanding the scope of penalties to entities collaborating in cartelisation.

At present, the antitrust watchdog, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), cannot impose penalties on corporate entities based on their global turnover. Penalties are currently restricted to the company’s sales in the relevant market only, experts said.

The amendments also make compliance easy by allowing CCI to regulate mergers and acquisitions (M&A) based on the value of transactions with Rs. 2,000 crore threshold, if the target entity has substantial business operations in India. It also proposed that CCI would need to take a view within 30 days on the likelihood of a combination or M&A causing adverse effect on the competition.