MCA-Led Digital Competition Law Committee To Include Startups, News Publishers

A 16-member panel, constituted by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) for drafting the new digital competition law, has decided to widen the scope of its discussions by adding industry stakeholders to the committee. 

The MCA-led digital competition law committee reached this decision in its first meeting on February 22. The committee is now anticipated to add domestic startups and news publishers to the panel, a senior official told Business Standard. 

The said meeting was headed by the MCA secretary Manoj Govil, who will also be nominating new members to the panel. 

The development comes a few weeks after various domestic startups and news publishers expressed concern about non-inclusion in the digital competition law. They also stated that the MCA-led panel is dominated by corporate lawyers, which are mostly representing tech colossal. 

The panel comprises Sangeeta Verma, chairperson of the Competition Commission of India (CCI); Saurabh Srivastava, NASSCOM cofounder and chairman of Indian Angel Network; Haigreve Khaitan of Khaitan & Co; Pallavi Shardul Shroff of Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co; and Anand Pathak, P&A Law Offices, among others.  

The panel also includes representatives of the Departments of Commerce, Economic Affairs, and Consumer Affairs, NITI Aayog, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT). 

In late 2022, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance asked the Indian government to introduce a new digital competition law in its recommendation for a report titled ‘Anti competitive practices by Big Tech companies.’

Since then, the Centre has been scrutinising various tech giants such as Meta, Twitter, Google, and Amazon for their market dominance in India.

In 2022, the CCI imposed a total penalty of INR 2,273 Cr on Google in two different cases, for using its dominance in the Android devices market and Play Store policies. The tech giant is currently fighting the lawsuit against the watchdog CCI before NCLAT.

Besides, the watchdog is also probing Meta’s messaging platform WhatsApp for abusing its dominance via its contentious privacy policy update of 2021.