The Supreme Court’s hearing on clubbing the cases pertaining to Competition Commission of India’s probe against Amazon and Flipkart, was inconclusive on Friday and will be heard again on Dec. 16. The court is seeking explanation on resistance to transferring all petitions to Karnataka High Court.
The competition watchdog had sought transfer of all 24 cases to either the top court or the Delhi High Court and alleged that at least 20 e-tailers attempted to “scuttle the investigation” into anti-competitive practices by the two e-commerce giants.
The top court bench suggested all the cases be moved to Karnataka High Court, as the state HC is hearing a matter involving procedural irregularities by the CCI and its Director General in their investigation against Walmart’s Flipkart and Amazon, and is nearing judgement.
However, the petitioners argued that while the Karnataka High Court case comes to a close, the rest of the cases be moved to Delhi High Court.
The issue concerns a 2020 antitrust investigation into Amazon and Flipkart for providing preferential treatment to select e-tailers, such as Cloudtail India Pvt., Samsung India Electronics Pvt., Vivo Mobile India Pvt., and Appario Retail Pvt.
The inquiry report also noted that smartphone makers Vivo and Samsung were charged with collaborating with these e-commerce majors to launch products exclusively online, in breach of competition regulations.
CCI’s measures against Flipkart and Amazon have been temporarily suspended by the Karnataka High Court, due to procedural irregularities made by the Director General of the CCI throughout the probe. It has been noted that it was against customary protocol for DG to reclassify vendors who were originally designated as “third parties” to “opposite parties” without first obtaining CCI permission.
