Frivolous appeals hold up CCI penalties. Stricter rules may make that tougher

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. New Delhi: India's competition watchdog has cleared stricter penalty recovery rules to prevent erring parties from delaying payments by filing frivolous appeals, according to two people aware of the development. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has approved an overhaul of its norms to allow issuing a demand notice to the erring enterprise to recover the penalty alongside the adjudication order holding them guilty, the people said on the condition of anonymity as details are not public yet.

This is a departure from the current practice of issuing demand notice after the period specified in the CCI order to pay the penalty ends. That gave the erring parties a widow to side-step the CCI orders by resorting to delaying tactics, the people said. CCI chairperson Ravneet Kaur and three other members have approved the new regulations, said the people.

These—likely to be called CCI (Manner of Recovery of Monetary Penalty) Regulations, 2025—will be notified soon, they said. Also read | CCI's WhatsApp order revives question on regulatory turf Queries emailed to the CCI on Friday seeking comments for the story remained unanswered at the time of publishing. In FY22, the CCI realized about 13% of the ₹1,336 crore penalty it imposed, followed by half of the ₹2,672 crore in FY23 and 84% of the ₹2.5 crore it imposed in FY24, according to its annual report for 2023-24.

The CCI has noticed that the existing rules allow the accused parties to move the Competition Appellate Tribunal and the courts to secure a stay on the penalty. That prevents the watchdog from issuing a demand notice, which if not complied with, gives rise to interest liability on the penalty. The interest liability on the