CCI to get a voice in policy formulation, use AI to analyse data

The government is planning to expand the role of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) by making it a body that will engage with the Centre and states in formulating their policies and revising them so that competition is not affected.

“We want the CCI to be a think-tank too by analysing a policy framework rather than only investigating and imposing fines on those who violate competition law,” a senior corporate ministry official says.

The CCI has started studying sectors such as healthcare and car aggregators. 

The CCI's role will be recast through an overhaul of the Competition Act, for which an expert committee has been set up.

Even after the Act’s amendment, the CCI will not get search and seizure powers. The Commission will continue to go to the magistrate to get permission for this.

A senior official of the corporate affairs ministry said the Act would be amended to ensure there was no turf war between sectoral regulators and the Commission. 

WHAT IT MEANS

• Competition commission to become a think tank for state governments 
   
• CCI to be asked to recommend policy changes to ensure fair competition 
   
• CCI to advise states in busting cartels in government tender 
   
• CCI to use artificial intelligence to analyze data

Further, the ministry has written to states, asking them to ensure there were no cartels in government tenders. Ministry officials will meet states on this. 

The government is planning to introduce advanced technologies to verify and analyse the data on mergers and acquisitions to see if these amalgamations are violating competition law.

The government has constituted a panel under the chairmanship of Corporate Affairs Secretary Injeti Srinivas to review the Act. The committee has been given three months to recommend changes. 

The Competition Act was enacted in 2002 but the Competition Commission of India (CCI) became operational in 2009. The ministry said the Act needed amending because the dynamics had changed and the size of India's economy had grown immensely in these nine years. 

India’s economy is the fifth-largest in the world and will grow in the coming years, it said. 

Earlier this year, Srinivas had said the Commission should work like a regulator and not a tribunal or court. He also stated that in discharging its advocacy role, the Commission needed to do more. Further, the government planned to set up regional offices of the Commission so that the body at the Centre was not burdened, he had said. 

The government recently reduced the number of members in the commission to three from six. The government is planning to let the commission have part-time members to ease its workload.

Below these members, the commission has 43 filled positions of the sanctioned 91 at the levels of secretary, advisor, director, joint director and deputy director.

In the director-general’s office, which investigates cases, there are 17 vacancies in 33 sanctioned posts for the positions of director-general, additional director-general, joint director-general and deputy director. 

Over the years, the number of orders passed by the CCI but quashed by the appellate body that looks at competition appeals has grown fewer. Earlier, the Competition Appellate Tribunal (COMPAT) was the appellate body, but in 2017 it was replaced by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLAT).

According to the official data, 87 orders passed by the CCI were set aside by the appellate tribunal in 2015-16, and the number came down to 69 in 2016-17 and just four in 2017-18. 

Competition lawyers say this is because the Commission has streamlined its investigations.