We are republishing this very old post from A First Taste of Law.

This regulator is the guardian of the free-market and protects it from any abusive practices. Naturally, it protects consumer interest, by checking unfair market practices. You can thank the other regulator for the cheap phone calls, cheaper roaming tariffs and the DND service that saves you from being hounded by millions of telemarketers. As government withdrew from the market, it was entrusted with the mighty task of maintaining a semblance of fairness in the free market jungle. Here come two vanguards of twenty-first century India.
Competition Commission of India (CCI)
The formation of the Commission was subject to a constitutional challenge before the Supreme Court, and the Competition Act has become operational in 2009, a good 7 years after its initial enactment. It is modeled along the lines of competition laws of the European Union. Since its constitution, the Competition Commission has never missed a second of action. This post charts out the activity in the nascent field of competition law in

India, as the Competition Commission of India dawns its mantle.

•  The war of the Stock Exchanges
  The CCI has commenced investigation against the National Stock Exchange (NSE) pursuant to a complaint by the MCX Stock Exchange (MCX-SX) when NSE waived its transaction fees on currency derivatives transactions. MCX-SX alleges that this amounts to predatory pricing, that is, selling below cost price in order to reduce or eliminate its competitors.
•  The IPL Brouhaha
  The Indian Premier League (IPL) has clearly been the most important event of the first quarter of this year – it has swallowed its own creator. With the resignation of Lalit Modi and Minister of State for External Affairs – Mr. Shashi Tharoor, who had in the past contested for the post of UN Secretary General, and who has written a lot of interesting books on Indian culture, Competition Commission has also propelled itself into feverish activity in this controversy.
  The Government was considering referring the matter to the Commission in respect of bid-rigging for the auction of the Kochi team. Big-rigging is prohibited under competition law, and its disastrous effect is self-evident – when two or more bidders collaborate to keep bid prices in an auction low, a product can never generate its true market price. Of course, it might be alleged by fans of other sports that the Indian market has overhyped and overpriced cricket. Possibly true, but if this stance is maintained for cricket, nothing can be done if in future, there is an auction conducted for another sport – say, an auction of broadcasting rights to TV Channels of Formula One event in New Delhi. That auction would also fetch lower than market price because of bid-rigging, thus harming the promotion of another sport as well.
  A lot rests on the Competition Commission, in terms of how it decides to crystallize and apply the relatively general terms of the Competition Act. It will be required to pass a host of sector-specific regulations on various aspects of the law to deal with different categories of anti-competitive prices, much like its European counterpart. Next, the implementation of the law is largely dependent on the skill-sets of the experts it hires. This also justifies the recent rush by Indian law firms to hire foreign qualified professionals who have experience in competition law.
• Lifting the veil on Raavan
  The Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce (KFCC), a body whose role is to promote Kannada films, issued a ban against the release of the Hindi and Tamil versions of the movie ‘Raavan’. The reason for the ban was that Reliance Big Entertainment Limited had released it in more theatres than it had previously agreed to, violating KFCC’s norms. The CCI ordered an interim stay of the ban and asked the Director General to commence an investigation into whether the ban was an abuse of dominant position by the KFCC. KFCC approached the High Court against the interim order passed by the Competition Commission, which it later withdrew.

Department of Telecom (DoT) and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI):

Mobile Number Portability, a much awaited service which makes it easier for customers to switch mobile service providers as they can retain their previous numbers, was planned to be introduced by 31st March 2010, but the deadline for the same has now been extended to 30th October, 2010. Further, it has been in the news for a host of regulatory requirements in relation to security clearances, which contain stringent conditions as regards the manufacture of telecom equipment domestically. Such a requirement has obstructed the growth plans of Chinese equipment manufacturers such as Huawei and ZTE. Even Research in Motion, the manufacturer of the famous business phone BlackBerry, has not been able to steer clear of the DoT’s security concerns over its corporate e-mail and Blackberry chat functions. Next, the auction of 3G, which was projected to generate Rs. 35,000 crores, far exceeded expectations, fetching Rs. 67,000 crores and the Broadband Wireless spectrum (BWA) fetched Rs. 35,000 crores, making it easier for the Government to cut fiscal deficit. As a downside, it caused a liquidity crunch for banks in the short term, as funds were earmarked to be released for the spectrum winners. To ease the crunch, the Government decided to buy back bonds amounting to Rs. 20,000 crores totally.

Endgame: Looking for a super-regulator?
While India does not have a super-regulator such as the Financial Services Authority of the

UK (which, incidentally, is scheduled to be abolished under the Cameron regime), discussions for the same have been on. More recently, in light of the spat between SEBI and IRDA over Unit Linked Insurance Products outlined above in this post there has been debate on whether there should be an independent body to decide disputes between regulators themselves, in areas where there seems to be some conflict of jurisdiction amongst them. An ordinance issued on June 18 this year, called the Securities and Insurance Laws (Amendment and Validation) Ordinance, 2010 empowers a joint committee headed by the finance minister to decide on all regulatory disputes between SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India), IRDA (Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority), RBI and the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA). It remains to be seen whether the ordinance will be passed by the Parliament in its monsoon session which commenced on July 26. Reports of the move in greater detail are available here, here, here and here).

At the end of the day, healthy regulatory competition is an important goal to be achieved, and this series of posts has covered major regulatory moves for that purpose. We let readers decide who’s had the strongest impact on India, and whether the innovations introduced have been progressive or retrogressive.