The Bombay High Court on 22nd September, 2017 ruled against the Competition Commission of India (CCI) having jurisdiction to adjudicate cases and concerns pertaining to the regulations and policies under the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act (TRAI Act). Providing relief to the telecom providers Bharti Airtel Ltd, Vodafone India Ltd and Idea Cellular Ltd, a bench of Justices Anoop Mohta and Bharati Dangre held that any question of interpretation or clarification of provisions of contracts and regulations in the Telecom Sector is to be settled by the authorities under the TRAI Act or TDSAT. Further, by pointing out the independent nature of the TRAI Act and the Competition Act, it also delved into the objectives of both the acts and the importance of using them as a metric to assess the question of jurisdiction.
Earlier in April, the CCI had instructed the Director General under Section 26(1) to investigate these cellular operators on account of ‘cartelization’ as they were denying points of interconnect (POI) to Reliance Jio which was subsequently leading to an obstruction in its network. It was contented by Reliance Jio that this decision made by the Cellular Operator Association of India (COAI) to which these operators are a part of and hence they were misusing the platform to cartelize. The Bombay High Court also commented on this aspect of the CCI order by stating that every majority decision could not be termed as ‘cartelisation’.
This post has been authored by Aparmita Pratap of West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata.
Opmerkingen