CCI + Settlement

A competition law co-blogger recently complained about how the European Commission was turning into a “settlement Junkie”.  While this is a debate which no doubt all EC competition law jurists and lawyers will seek to actively participate in and discusss, the post did get me thinking on any future prospective settlements with the CCI in India.

As far as I know, the CCI has till date not settled any case either related to an anti-competitive agreement or an abuse of dominant position. And on a perusal of the Act, there is a good reason. The Commission doesn’t have the power to settle cases !!  No section of the Competition Act seems to allow the CCI to settle a case if it wishes to do so. The Section which seems to come closest to granting such a power to the Commission may be Section 36 (Power of the Commission to Regulate its Own procedure). However, that the power to settle a case can be interpreted under this Section seems a doubtful proposition.

Of course, this may not necessarily be a bad thing, as we can see from the above mentioned blog post.