Private Settlements Of Proceedings: Boundaries Of The CCI's Jurisdiction

I. Introduction

Competition law in India is governed by the Competition Act, 2002 (‘Act’) which is not confined the adjudication of bilateral disputes; it is designed to protect market structure, consumer welfare, and the competitive process, as a whole. The distinction between a right in rem and a right in personam is central to understanding this design.

A right in personam is enforceable only against a specific person and ordinarily arises from private disputes, with contractual disputes being a classic example. A right in rem, by contrast, operates more broadly: it is enforceable against the world or society at large and concerns a legally protected interest whose infringement has implications beyond immediate parties. In Samir Agrawal v. Competition Commission of India, Civil Appeal No. 3100 of 2020, the Hon’ble Supreme Court held that proceedings under the Competition Act are in the nature of actions in rem rather than in personam, underscoring that competition enforcement is not merely about vindicating a private grievance but about preserving the integrity of the market and protecting dispersed public interests.

The underlying rationale is that conduct alleged to be anti-competitive may continue to adversely affect competitors, consumers, and the competitive process, notwithstanding the resolution of the dispute between the immediate parties. Accordingly, the settlement of a private dispute does not necessarily extinguish the broader public interest concerns arising from the alleged anti-competitive conduct. While a private settlement may therefore be relevant inter se between the parties and contribute to the larger assessment of conduct and extent of culpability, it cannot automatically displace the regulator’s statutory responsibility to consider whether the impugned conduct has wider market consequences.

The position, however, has become increasingly nuanced, with courts and the Competition Commission of India (‘CCI’) recognising that the effect of a private settlement on proceedings depends upon the character of the allegations and the broader public interest concerns they engage. This evolving jurisprudence reflects an attempt to balance the autonomy of private parties to resolve disputes with the CCI’s independent obligation to protect the competitive process. It is against this backdrop that this article examines the trajectory of the law and considers whether a coherent doctrinal framework can reconcile these competing objectives.

II. The Initial Balancing Approach

The approach in Tamil Nadu Film Exhibitors Association v. Competition Commission of India, Writ Appeal Nos.1806 and 1807 of 2013, may be understood as an attempt to reconcile the public character of competition law with the pragmatic value of a private settlement between the parties. Rather than treating compromise as an automatic bar to inquiry, the Hon’ble Madras High Court recognised that a settlement may be accepted only if it brings the anti-competitive conduct to an end and does not operate as a device to shield unlawful conduct from scrutiny. The significance of the decision lies in its recognition that the Act does not prohibit private settlements per se, but subjects them to CCI’s independent scrutiny. While parties remain free to compromise their disputes, the CCI must satisfy itself that accepting the settlement would neither permit the alleged anti-competitive conduct to continue nor defeat the very object of the inquiry. The decision thus preserves a meaningful supervisory role for the CCI by ensuring that private settlements cannot be used to circumvent public enforcement or compromise the broader public interest embodied in competition law.

III. Judicial shift in treating competition disputes as private commercial conflicts

A. Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal (2019) 

In Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal Pvt. Ltd. v. Competition Commission of India, Writ Petition No. 14277 of 2018, the Division Bench of the Hon’ble Bombay High Court permitted the informants to withdraw the information filed before the CCI after the parties had arrived at a settlement that effectively resolved the underlying competition dispute. Significantly, unlike in the case of Tamil Nadu Film Exhibitors, the Court did not recognise or even address any continuing power of the CCI to scrutinise the settlement to ascertain whether it was a bona fide resolution or a device to evade regulatory oversight.

This omission is doctrinally significant. Rather than endorsing or affirming the supervisory jurisdiction of the CCI, the judgment implicitly accepted that the settlement itself was sufficient to bring the proceedings to an end, without requiring any independent assessment of residual competition concerns. While the decision does not expressly curtail the CCI’s statutory powers, it nonetheless delineates the scope of the CCI’s jurisdiction by indicating that, in cases where the settlement extinguishes the underlying controversy, continued regulatory intervention may not be warranted. The judgment thus marks a departure from the supervisory approach adopted in Tamil Nadu Film Exhibitors and reflects a greater judicial willingness to accord determinative weight to party autonomy in appropriate cases.

B. Monsanto Holdings (2023)

A more pronounced shift in judicial reasoning is discernible in Monsanto Holdings Pvt. Ltd. v. Competition Commission of India, LPA No. 150 of 2020. The proceedings therein arose from an information filed before the CCI alleging that Monsanto Holdings and its affiliates had abused their dominant position by imposing unfair and restrictive conditions in the licensing of their patented ‘Bt Cotton’ technology to Indian seed manufacturers. During the pendency of the proceedings before the CCI, however, the informant and the opposite parties entered into a settlement, pursuant to which the informant expressed its intention not to pursue the allegations before the CCI.

The Hon’ble Division Bench of the Delhi High Court held that once a settlement had been reached between the informant and the opposite party, “the very substratum of the proceedings” before the CCI ceased to exist, thereby rendering the continuation of the proceedings unwarranted. In arriving at this conclusion, the Court reasoned that the settlement had effectively extinguished the controversy that formed the basis of the information, leaving no surviving dispute to justify the continuation of the impugned proceedings. The Court further observed that the underlying dispute arose from Chapter XVI of the Patents Act, 1970, which constituted a complete code governing such disputes, and that the legislature had consciously provided remedies operating in personam, thereby reinforcing the conclusion that no purpose would be served by permitting the proceedings before the CCI to continue in the peculiar facts of the case.

Consequently, unlike the approach adopted in Tamil Nadu Film Exhibitors, which envisaged a continuing supervisory role for the CCI notwithstanding a private settlement, Monsanto accorded determinative significance to the settlement itself in assessing the necessity of further regulatory intervention. While the judgment should not be understood as laying down a general proposition that every competition proceeding must terminate upon settlement, it nevertheless delineates the CCI's jurisdiction by suggesting that where the settlement eliminates the very foundation on which the proceedings rest, the rationale for their continuation may cease to exist.

Although the Delhi High Court’s decision was subsequently carried in appeal, the Supreme Court declined to interfere having regard to the peculiar facts and circumstances of the case, particularly the fact that the original informants no longer wished to pursue the matter. The Court expressly kept the questions of law open for consideration in an appropriate case. Hence, the Supreme Court’s order also should not be construed as endorsing a general principle that private settlements invariably warrant the termination of competition proceedings; rather, its precedential value remains confined to the factual matrix in which the underlying controversy had effectively ceased to survive.

C. JCB India (2024)

The Hon’ble Delhi High Court’s decision in JCB India Limited and Anr. v. Competition Commission of India, W.P.(C) 2244 of 2014, further clarified the limits of the CCI’s jurisdiction in the context of private settlements. The information before the CCI was founded almost entirely on allegations that JCB had abused its dominant position by engaging in “sham” or predatory litigation through the institution of design infringement proceedings against the informant. Upon examining the information, the Court observed that the core issue lay not in any independent anti-competitive conduct, but in allegations concerning the abuse of judicial and regulatory processes arising out of the infringement proceedings. Since there were questions raised, relating to the maintainability of those infringement proceedings and the validity of the underlying design registrations, the Court felt that these questions lie exclusively within the jurisdiction of the High Court and / or the Patent and Design Office respectively, and not the CCI. Consequently, once the design infringement dispute itself had been settled through mediation, the substratum of the CCI proceedings also collapsed. Permitting the investigation to continue would undermine the very objective of mediation by depriving the settlement of its finality.

Importantly, however, the Court did not altogether exclude the CCI’s authority to scrutinise settlements. It acknowledged that the CCI may possess the power to examine a settlement where the settlement itself is alleged to constitute an abuse of dominance or gives rise to independent anti-competitive concerns. Similarly, if a settlement is alleged to be anti-competitive, it may fall for consideration under Section 3 of the Act. In the absence of any such allegation, however, the Court held that a purely theoretical power of scrutiny could not justify continuing proceedings after the parties had amicably resolved their dispute.

The decision therefore strikes a balance between preserving the finality of settlements and recognising the CCI’s continuing regulatory role where genuine competition concerns survive. Rather than treating settlements as either wholly immune from, or invariably subject to, regulatory scrutiny, JCB delineates the CCI’s jurisdiction by making its intervention contingent upon the existence of an independent competition law issue beyond the parties' private settlement.

IV. GMR Airworks and the Reassertion of the In Rem Principle

In contrast to the evolving judicial recognition of private settlements, the CCI’s decision in GMR Airworks, Case No. 30 of 2019, reaffirms the conventional understanding of competition law as a public enforcement regime. Faced with an application seeking withdrawal of the information on the ground that the parties had resolved their commercial dispute, the CCI declined to terminate the proceedings, holding that an investigation under the Act, is not in the nature of a private lis between contesting parties but constitutes a proceeding in rem, having implications for the market and its various stakeholders. In reaching this conclusion, the CCI placed reliance on the Supreme Court’s decision in Samir Agrawal, which characterised proceedings before the CCI as inquisitorial rather than adversarial. It further observed that the Act does not contain any provision permitting the withdrawal of an information once filed, thereby indicating that the continuance of proceedings is governed by the statutory mandate of the CCI and not by the subsequent wishes of the informant.

The significance of GMR Airworks lies not merely in its refusal to permit withdrawal, but in its reassertion of the institutional role of the CCI as a market regulator. Unlike the approach adopted in Monsanto and JCB, which recognised that settlements may, in appropriate circumstances, justify the termination of proceedings, the CCI emphasised that the public character of competition law imposes an independent obligation to examine conduct affecting competitive markets.

V. Way Forward

The foregoing discussion demonstrates that the emerging jurisprudence does not warrant either an absolute rejection or an unqualified acceptance of private settlements in competition proceedings. Rather, the permissibility of settlement-based closure should depend upon whether the dispute continues to engage the public enforcement objectives of competition law beyond the interests of the settling parties.

In determining this question, the courts and the CCI ought to undertake a contextual assessment of the circumstances of each case. Relevant factors could include the nature of the alleged conduct, whether it has market-wide implications or is confined to a bilateral commercial dispute, the continuing impact of the impugned conduct on competition, the stage at which the settlement is reached, and, most importantly, whether the settlement represents a genuine resolution of the dispute. Such an assessment would enable the CCI to distinguish cases where settlement genuinely extinguishes the competition concern from those where regulatory intervention continues to be necessary despite the parties’ agreement.

At the same time, recognising private settlements cannot come at the cost of diluting the CCI’s statutory mandate as the guardian of competitive markets. Even where proceedings are terminated on account of a private settlement, the CCI should retain a limited supervisory jurisdiction to satisfy itself that the settlement neither conceals continuing anti-competitive conduct nor prejudices market contestability. Accordingly, any decision to close proceedings should be supported by a reasoned assessment that no independent competition concerns survive, with the inquiry focusing not merely on the wishes of the parties but on the likely consequences of closure for competition, consumers and other market participants. Such safeguards would preserve the public character of competition law while avoiding unnecessary interference in disputes that have genuinely lost their competition-law significance.

Ultimately, the evolving jurisprudence necessitates a balanced approach that neither permits private settlements to conclusively determine the fate of competition proceedings nor renders them inconsequential to the CCI’s exercise of jurisdiction. By evaluating settlements against clearly defined factors and preserving a limited supervisory role for the CCI where independent competition concerns persist, the law can arrive at a principled middle ground. Such an approach would simultaneously uphold party autonomy in resolving private commercial disputes and preserve the CCI's public enforcement mandate to safeguard competitive markets and consumer welfare.

The authors would like to acknowledge the inputs of Mr. Shaunak Saha, 3^rd year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at the Institute of Law, Nirma University, Ahmedabad.

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