The government took a significant step on Tuesday by appointing three new members to the Competition Commission of India (CCI), a move aimed at expediting the decision-making processes of the antitrust regulator.
The three newly appointed members include Anil Agrawal, a former Director General of Police and a former Additional Secretary at the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade; Deepak Anurag, a former Additional Deputy Comptroller and Auditor General of India; and Sweta Kakkad, an independent lawyer who previously served as the Interim Chief Compliance Officer at WhatsApp, as reported by Reuters news agency.
This development increases the total number of members at the CCI to four, which includes Chairperson Ravneet Kaur.
These appointments carry significant weight as the CCI is actively engaged in investigations into several prominent international corporations suspected of antitrust violations. Notable among the companies under scrutiny are Amazon, Flipkart (owned by Walmart), Google, and the liquor giant Pernod Ricard.
Agrawal and Kakkad are expected to be officially sworn in later today, while Anurag is scheduled to join the commission next week. With the immediate addition of two members, the CCI will maintain a three-member quorum, a pivotal requirement for making decisions related to mergers, combinations, and investigation reports.
These appointments come at a critical juncture, as two former CCI members, Bhagwant Singh Bishnoi and Sangeeta Verma, retired in late August and on September 17, respectively. Their retirements had raised concerns about the possibility of the regulator being left with only the Chairperson, potentially disrupting its functioning.
In January, the government had invited applications for three CCI member positions, with the due date extended to May 1. However, there had been no official announcement regarding the appointments, leading to concerns that the CCI might face a situation akin to the seven-month period when it operated without a full-time chief following the departure of former Chairman Ashok Kumar Gupta in October 2022.
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