Who is Ravneet Kaur, the newly appointed chairperson of CCI?

Ravneet Kaur

On May 15, the government announced the appointment of Ravneet Kaur as the new chairperson of the Competition Commission of India (CCI). A seasoned bureaucrat with over 35 years of experience in various departments, Kaur will be the chairperson of the antitrust tribunal for a period of five years.

Kaur’s appointment comes at a time when the CCI is defending its orders in various antitrust cases in both National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) and the Supreme Court. The CCI has not had a quorum for the last seven months, since its last chairperson Ashok Kumar Gupta retired in October 2022.

The chairperson’s vacancy had created a situation wherein the Delhi High Court had to interfere invoking the doctrine of necessity to ask the CCI to take up a plea by Indian start-ups against Google. Kaur’s appointment is thus crucial at the moment, considering the pendency of many antitrust and combinations cases.

A post-graduate in economics from Punjab University, Kaur has served across departments even though her focus area has been finance. Kaur spent a year as a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow at Cornell University, USA and holds an MA in Economics and a M.Sc. in Public Economic Management from University of Birmingham, UK. She also served as a Consultant with International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC.

An IAS officer of the 1988 batch, Kaur is presently special chief secretary and financial advisor in the Punjab government’s Department of Revenue and Disaster Management. In her 35-year-long career as a bureaucrat, Kaur has held various posts such as Principal Secretary in the Departments of Higher Education and Languages, Cabinet, Coordination and Parliamentary Affairs with the Government of Punjab among others. She has also served as the vice chairperson and managing director of Punjab Communications Limited, and chairperson and managing director of India Infrastructure Finance Company Ltd.

With the government pushing for a digital competition bill in 2023, it is likely that Kaur’s tenure as the chairperson of CCI will be eventful.