Supreme Court: A Bench comprising of A.K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan, JJ. dismissed an appeal filed against the judgment of Bombay High Court whereby it held that Competition Commission of India had no jurisdiction to pass order in the instant matter as the issues were covered by Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 and Telecom Regulatory Authority Act, 1997 and the appropriate forum was the Telecom Dispute Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT).
In the present matter, the Court was faced with determining the width and scope of the powers of the CCI under the Competition Act, 2002 pertaining to telecom sector vis-a-vis the scope of the powers of TRAI under the TRAI Act, 1997.
Factual Matrix
On 21-10-2013, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. was granted a licence under Section 4 of the Telegraph Act by the Department of Telecom (DoT) for providing telecommunication services in all 22 circles in India. Soon thereafter, RJIL executed interconnection agreements with existing telecom operators including Airtel, Idea and Vodafone. RJIL requested these companies to augment Point of Interconnection (POIs) for access as the capacity already provided to it was causing huge POI congestion, resulting in call failures on its network. According to RJIL, these companies intentionally ignored the aforesaid request.
Subsequently, in November 2016, RJIL filed information under Section 19 of the Competition Act before the CCI, As per RJIL, the respondent service providers, along with Cellular Operators Association of India, formed a cartel and acted in an anti-competitive manner which is prohibited by the Act. The CCI passed order dated 21-4-2017 under Section 26(1) as per which it came to a prima facie conclusion that case for investigation was made out and directed the Director-General to cause investigation in the case. Aggrieved thereby, respondents filed writ petitions before the High Court which quashed the order of CCI on the ground that CCI lacked jurisdiction to entertain such complaints/information filed under Section 19 as such matter falls within the exclusive jurisdiction of another regulatory authority, namely, TRAI.
Challenging this order passed by the High Court, the appellants were before the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court considered the matter on following points:
(a) Jurisdiction of CCI
After noting salient features of Competition Act and TRAI Act, the Court concluded that as TRAI is constituted as an expert regulatory body which specifically governs the telecom sector, the aforesaid aspects of the disputes were to be decided by TRAI in the first instance. These were jurisdictional aspects. The High Court was right in concluding that the concepts of “subscriber”, “test period”, “reasonable demand”, etc, arising out of TRAI Act and the policy so declared, are the matters within the jurisdiction of TDSAT under the TRAI Act. Only when the jurisdictional facts in the present matter were determined by the TRAI against the respondents, the next question would arise as to whether it was a result of any concerted agreement between the respondents. It would be at that stage the CCI can go into the question as to whether violation of the provisions of TRAI Act amounts to ‘abuse of dominance’ or ‘anti-competitive agreements’.
(b) Whether TRAI has the exclusive jurisdiction to deal with matters involving anti-competitive practices to the exclusion of CCI altogether?
The function that is assigned to CCI is distinct from the function of TRAI. It is within the exhaustive domain of CCI to find out as to whether a particular agreement will have an appreciable adverse effect on competition within the relevant market in India. Such functions not only come within the domain of CCI, but TRAI is not at all equipped to deal with the same.
The Court, thus, did not agree with the appellants that CCI could have dealt with this matter without availing the inquiry by TRAI. It also did not agree with the respondents that insofar as the telecom sector is concerned, the jurisdiction of the CCI under the Competition Act is totally ousted.
In incidental issues, the Court decided that the petitions field by other companies before the Bombay High court were maintainable. When such jurisdictional issues arise, the writ petition would clearly be maintainable. In view of the above discussion, the Court dismissed the appeal while upholding the decision of the High Court. [CCI v. Bharti Airtel Ltd., 2018 SCC OnLine SC 2678, decided on 05-12-2018]