Standing Committee of Finance headed by Jayant Sinha will meet on December 8 to contemplate and undertake the draft Report on Competitors (modification) Invoice 2022.
The Parliamentary Panel has additionally on that day summoned Regulation Secretary Niten Chandra to temporary them on sure provisions of the Invoice, sources near the event stated.
One of many points on which Panel might particularly talk about with the Regulation Secretary is the necessity for readability on the supply within the Invoice that enables DG (inspection) to look at authorized advisors. The purpose that wants readability is whether or not this provision will violate client-attorney privileged communication underneath the Indian Proof Act, they added.
Submit the interplay with the Regulation Secretary, the Standing Committee is predicted to, on the identical day, undertake the Report on the Invoice.
To scale back litigations
The proposed adoption of the draft Report on December 8 is a pointer that the Authorities might within the upcoming Winter Session take up for passage the Competitors (modification) Invoice 2022, launched in Lok Sabha on August 5.
That is even because the Competitors Invoice doesn’t kind a part of the preliminary listing of 16 Payments that the Authorities intends to take up for passage within the upcoming winter session.
The Competitors (modification) Invoice, amongst different issues, seeks to broaden the scope of anti-competitive agreements, pace up approvals of mergers and acquisitions and scale back litigations.
Reducing time restrict
The Invoice additionally offers discount in time restrict for approval of combos from 210 days to 150 days and forming a prima facie opinion by the Fee inside 20 days for expeditious approval of combos.
In addition to introducing the idea of deal worth threshold of ₹2,000 crore in order to primarily carry Large tech’s offshore M&A offers (with India nexus) underneath CCI’s merger management regime, the Invoice proposes introduction of limitation interval of three years for submitting data on anti-competitive agreements and abuse of dominant place earlier than the Fee. The Invoice additionally seeks to introduce settlement and dedication framework to cut back litigations.
It additionally proposes to introduce a “Leniency Plus” programme — a brand new cartel detecting instrument —that will encourage firms already underneath investigation for one cartel to report different cartels unknown to the competitors regulator.
