One Clock for the Commission, Another for the Applicant: Asymmetry in the CCI’s 2026 Commitment Amendments
[Dhruv is a student at National Law School of India University.]
On 18 August 2026, the Competition Commission of India (Commission) notified the Competition Commission of India (Commitment) Amendment Regulations 2026. The accompanying General Statement presents the exercise as one of providing clarity and procedural certainty in response to administrative issues thrown up by 2 years of practice. Press coverage read it the same way, as 4 relaxations of a framework that had proved too tight: 60 days to file rather than 45, 15 working days for preliminary consideration rather than 7, 180 working days for the proceeding rather than 130, and a 10-day cure for defects.
When read against the principal regulations of 2024, the relaxations run in one direction. Both periods binding the Commission have been lengthened and cushioned against breach. The one period binding the applicant has been fixed at ten days and hardened in consequence. The periods that grew are those during which the Section 26 inquiry stands suspended, so the cost falls on the informant rather than on either participant.
The Filing Window, and Who Decides its Length
Regulation 3(3) now allows sixty days from receipt of the Section 26(1) order and this period is not the operative deadline. Regulation 3(2), which the amendment does not touch, requires filing within the sixty days or before the party receives the Director General’s report, whichever falls earlier, and the second of those caps is Parliament’s. Section 48B(2) permits an offer at any time after the Section 26(1) order and before receipt of the report, within such time as may be specified by regulations. It can be read as requiring a determinate period ending before the report, in which case the proposal to allow filing until the report was submitted lay outside the Commission’s power. Even then it had to choose a number, and nothing obliged it to choose sixty.
This number is only half of what determines the window. Regulation 3(2) fixes the far end by reference to the DG's report, so the period actually available depends on when the Commission directs the DG to report. In Case No. 44 of 2025, the Commission ordered the report to be submitted within 90 days. The applicant's period is thus bounded on one side by a regulation the Commission itself frames, and on the other by a case-specific direction it issues.
Paragraph 7 of the General Statement defends the 60 days by pointing to the further thirty available on sufficient cause. Those thirty fall in exactly the stretch where Regulation 3(2) may already have closed the door. The cap will not bite in every case, since investigations often overrun and IndiGo applied while its own was still running. Even so, the Commission identified prescribed timelines as the problem and then gave the applicant sixty days while extending both of its own.
The Defect Provision, and What it Reveals
The original Regulation 3(4) provided that the applicant “may be asked” to remove defects, allowed rectification within 10 working days “or such other period as may be specified by the Commission”, and made invalidity permissive. The amended provision returns the application with the defects identified, requires refiling within 10 working days, adjusts the fee, and provides that the application “shall” be considered invalid where the defects are not cured in time.
The applicant gains something real, because the old text let the Commission decide whether to offer a cure at all, and return is now compulsory, however, the loss runs the other way. 10 working days is all there is, the words allowing a longer period having gone, and invalidity has shifted from permissive to mandatory. A guaranteed chance to cure has been bought with a deadline that cannot be extended however good the reason.
This exercise is premised on the idea that timelines have proved too tight yet this is the only period the Commission fixed outright, rather than simply extending an existing one. The framework is also silent on whether a refiled application keeps its original filing date. This matters because a return-and-refile can eat into the balance of the 60 days. Regulation 14(3) of the Combinations Regulations 2024 answers that question by deeming the notice given on the date of compliance, while Regulation 14(7) supplies a 45-day window for fee adjustment. The commitment framework has borrowed the return-and-refile structure, but adopted neither of the safeguards that accompany it.
The Outer Limit, and What It Was Holding Back
Regulation 4(7) reads as housekeeping, a target the Commission sets for finishing its own work. However, it does more as under Regulation 4(3), once an application complete in all respects is placed before it, the Commission may keep the inquiry against the applicant in abeyance until that application is decided. This is the framework’s only suspensory provision, since filing does not of itself halt an investigation.
The link between the two runs through a single word. Regulation 4(7) provides that on expiry of the period the inquiry “shall stand resumed”. An inquiry resumes only if it was suspended, and Regulation 4(3) is what suspends it. Regulation 4(7) therefore presupposes an abeyance and fixes the one date on which it ends by operation of law rather than by a further decision. Two qualifications belong here. Abeyance is discretionary, since Regulation 4(3) says the Commission “may”, and it can be lifted early, since the sub-regulation runs to final decision “or till such time, as may be decided by the Commission”. Both point the same way. The Commission decides when the suspension starts and when it lifts, and Regulation 4(7) was the single point at which that control passed out of its hands.
The amendment raises the base period to 180 working days and inserts a proviso excluding any time taken, or extension availed, by the applicant “or any other party” in furnishing information. Clauses 7 and 8 then preserve the older extension power and raise its figure to match. Two consequences follow for the suspended inquiry. First, 50 working days are added to the longest period an investigation into alleged abuse of dominance may sit paused without any further order. Second, the exclusion makes it impossible to identify the resumption date at all, since the deductions accrue as the proceeding runs and appear on no public record. The suspension is now not just longer, but indeterminate and this matters because of who bears it: the applicant chose it and paid a fee to enter it, while the informant did neither.
The period runs from receipt of an application complete “in terms of regulation 3”. Revised applications are invited under Regulations 4(2) and 4(5)(c), outside Regulation 3, so the clock starts with the original filing and runs through every revision, and the alternative defeats itself, since the Commission could then reset its own limit by calling for a revision. The pending Google matter shows where that leads. The Section 26(1) order in Case Number 42 of 2022 is dated 28 November 2024, so Regulation 3(3) puts the latest possible filing at about 11 February 2025 even with full condonation, and the 130 working days expired around 12 August 2025. It issued the Regulation 5 notice on 30 July 2025 and extended the comment period to 1 September 2025. By 18 August 2026 close to 400 working days had passed, the matter was still undecided, and the inquiry had been suspended throughout. Even the new 180-day figure would have run out in October 2025.
The Commission has almost certainly extended under the existing proviso, which requires written reasons and says nothing about publishing them. That is lawful, and it frames the real question. An outer limit means little when the body it binds may extend it at will and owes no public account of why. The amendment answers by adding a second escape route to a provision that already had one, and by making the new route automatic rather than reasoned. None of it needed an amendment as Regulations 15 and 16 already let the Commission determine procedure in a situation not provided for and issue clarifications by circular.
It could be said that removing time pressure allows a fuller consultation, and the twelve-day extension in the Google matter is some evidence for that, granted as it was under the old provision when no exclusion existed. What the proviso changes is who absorbs the cost, and regulation 4(3) answers it.
What the Applicant Gave Up for This
Schedule I, untouched, requires every applicant to waive the findings of fact and conclusions of law, appeal or review before the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal or other courts, and any plea of limitation or laches on restoration. Section 48B(7) already bars an appeal under Section 53B against any order under the section, so the appellate tribunal's waiver is largely declaratory. The waiver of recourse to other courts reaches beyond what the statute takes.
Section 48B(7) also explains why the outer limit was never truly enforceable. No appeal lies against any order under the section, rejection included, so nobody can hold the Commission to regulation 4(7). The applicant who fails is left with an unappealable rejection, the waivers that Regulation 4(11) keeps alive, a non-refundable fee, and an inquiry that resumes. The consideration was a prompt answer, and the amendment has made promptness discretionary while leaving every one of those terms in place.
Two applications in 2.5 years, neither decided, is a thin basis for a claim about uptake. It is enough to ask whether the calendar was ever the binding constraint on a mechanism that asks an enterprise to surrender its findings, its remedies and its clock, while declining to keep its own.