Concerns about the inadequacies of the existing Indian regulatory regime for competition law for digital markets were growing for a while. In February 2023, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (“MCA”) constituted a Committee on Digital Competition Law (“CDCL”) to evaluate the need for a separate framework regulating competition in Indian digital markets. This also coincided with the 2022 introduction of Digital Markets Act (“DMA”) in Europe which came into effect in May 2023. This is an ex-ante regulation to deter anti-competitive practices in European digital markets, which also acknowledged that the existing competition regime was sound and allowed enough flexibility for growth of digital economies.[1] On March 12, 2023, the aforesaid committee published its report along with the draft Digital Competition Bill, 2024 (“Draft Bill”) which outlined the criticality of regulating competition in digital markets, specifically, in presence of an ex-post regulatory regime i.e. the Competition Act, 2002.[2] Most stakeholders and global observers viewed the Draft Bill as premature and strikingly analogous to the DMA
Read more: The Draft Digital Competition Bill, 2024 & Challenges for Big-Tech