CCI, corporate affairs ministry to attend antitrust hearing on July 28

The parliamentary standing committee on finance is scheduled to have a hearing on July 28 with officials of the Competition Commission of India, Ministry of Corporate Affairs and others on alleged anti-competitive practices by the Big Tech.

According to a notice on the Lok Sabha website, during the July 28 meeting, the committee will hear the views of representatives of the Alliance of Digital India Foundation (ADIF).

Big Tech firms such as Google, Apple and Meta, too, were invited to the meeting but it is not clear if they will be there for the hearing.

On July 22, committee chairperson Jayant Sinha said, "We are extending invitations to Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix and others. Even if they are not able to attend, there will be representatives from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and the Competition Commission of India (to communicate their own positions on the matter)."

We have reached out to Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix and others regarding the matter, and will update the post when we receive a response.

The committee that day held a hearing attended by top executives of eight domestic tech firms, including Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal. Representatives from Flipkart, MakeMyTrip, Zomato and Swiggy also attended the meeting.

During the meeting the firms were questioned about what steps they were taking to address the concerns of vendors on their platforms, sources said.

Recently, there have been a series of complaints about alleged anti-competitive ways of technology platforms and the competition watchdog is already looking into several cases.

On April 28, the CCI made a presentation about competition aspects in the marketplace to the parliamentary panel. After that meeting, Sinha said the panel had "an excellent set of discussions" with officials from the corporate affairs and electronics and information technology ministries and the CCI.

A report presented by another parliamentary committee on June 21 expressed surprise at the delay in amending competition laws to keep up with the changes in the digital economy.