In news E-commerce majors Amazon and Flipkart recently lost their legal battle in the High Court of Karnataka, as a division bench upheld the Competition Commission of India’s decision to conduct an investigation into whether they had entered into anti-competitive agreements in violation of the provisions of the Competition Act, 2002.
About Competition Commission of India (CCI)
It is a statutory body established in 2003 and became fully functional in 2009.
It is responsible for enforcing The Competition Act, 2002 throughout India.
The Act prohibits anti-competitive agreements, abuse of dominant position by enterprises.
The Act regulates combinations (acquisition, acquiring of control and Merger and acquisition), which causes or likely to cause an appreciable adverse effect on competition within India.
Composition: CCI consists of a Chairperson and 6 Members appointed by the Central Government.
Eligibility: Person should be qualified to be a judge of a High Court, or, has special knowledge of, and professional experience of not less than fifteen years in international trade, economics, commerce, law, finance.
Functions: It is the duty of the Commission to:
eliminate practices having adverse effect on competition
promote and sustain competition.
protect the interests of consumers.
ensure freedom of trade in the markets of India.
Recent Judgements of CCI
Cement companies: CCI imposed a fine of ₹63.07 billion (US$910 million) on 11 cement companies for cartelisation in June 2012.
BCCI: CCI imposed a penalty of ₹522 million (US$7.6 million) on the BCCI in 2013 for misusing its dominant position.
Telecos: CCI ordered a probe into the functioning of Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) following a complaint filed by Reliance Jio against the cartelization by its rivals Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea cellular.
Google: The commission ordered an antitrust probe against Google for abusing its dominant position with Android to block market rivals.
