Brief – Report of the Committee on Digital Competition Law and Draft Digital Competition Bill, 2024

In December 2022, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance released its 53rd report recommending a new ex-ante law, i.e., the Digital Competition Act (DCA). Subsequently, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) constituted the Committee on Digital Competition Law (CDCL/Committee) with the mandate to assess the need and feasibility of an ex-ante framework and develop a draft DCA. The Committee has finally released its report (‘the Report’) recommending an ex-ante framework for the regulation of digital markets along with the Draft Digital Competition Bill 2024 (‘DCB/the Bill’), specifically to regulate large digital enterprises, i.e., Systemically Significant Digital Enterprises (SSDEs). Through this brief, we seek to provide a brief overview of the CDCL Report, synthesised with the draft DCB.