Competition law in India has matured rapidly. Since the Competition Commission of India began enforcing the Competition Act, 2002 in earnest, the body of doctrine, precedent, and regulatory practice has grown into a sophisticated and often complex landscape. Yet no single authoritative reference has kept pace with it. Practitioners counsel clients across merger control, abuse of dominance, and cartel enforcement without a shared vocabulary. Students encounter conflicting definitions across textbooks. Regulators and economists reason from different conceptual baselines.
The Encyclopedia on Competition Law is the Centre for Competition and Consumer Protection Law's answer to that gap. It is India's first comprehensive repository of competition law terminology, doctrine, and analysis, designed to serve as the definitive reference point for everyone who engages with this field.
What the Encyclopedia Is
The Encyclopedia is an expert-authored, India-centric reference work covering the full range of competition law concepts, from foundational antitrust doctrine to the evolving frontiers of digital markets regulation. Each entry is a concise, authoritative mini-essay, not a dictionary definition. Entries trace the doctrinal origin of a concept, its development in comparative jurisdictions, and its specific application under Indian law, with reference to CCI decisions, NCLAT orders, and relevant legislative provisions where applicable.
The Encyclopedia covers three broad domains.
Substantive
Substantive Competition Law
Abuse of dominance, anti-competitive agreements, combinations and merger control, and the standards and tests that govern each.
Institutional
Institutional & Procedural Law
The CCI's investigative powers, the Director General's role, leniency frameworks, settlement and commitment procedures, and appellate jurisdiction.
Emerging
Emerging & Sectoral Issues
Digital markets, self-preferencing, platform regulation, the Draft Digital Competition Bill 2024, and intersections with IP, consumer protection, and sectoral regulation.
Why This, Why Now
The Competition (Amendment) Act, 2023 introduced significant changes to the enforcement landscape: deal value thresholds for combinations, a statutory settlement and commitment mechanism, and revised timelines. The now withdrawn Draft Digital Competition Bill 2024 proposed a new ex ante framework for systemically significant digital enterprises. Global regulators, from the European Commission to the UK Competition and Markets Authority to the German Bundeskartellamt, are reshaping antitrust doctrine at speed. Indian competition law does not develop in isolation from these shifts, and practitioners and scholars need a resource that reflects both domestic precedent and comparative context in real time.
At the same time, there is a capacity-building deficit. Competition law remains a specialised field within Indian legal education. The Encyclopedia is designed to address this directly, giving students a rigorous, accessible entry point into doctrine, and giving practitioners and regulators a common reference that bridges academic analysis with enforcement reality.
The Editorial Approach
Every entry in the Encyclopedia is authored by a named expert: a practitioner from a leading law firm, an academic with specialist knowledge, or an economist with regulatory experience. Contributors are drawn from institutions including Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas, AZB and Partners, Kochhar and Co., TT&A, Axiom5 Law Chambers, LKS, Sarvada, CUTS International, NLU Delhi, NLU Jodhpur, and OP Jindal Global University, among others.
Entries follow a standardised structure. Each begins with a concise statement of the concept, proceeds to its doctrinal development and comparative treatment, and closes with its specific application and significance under Indian law. This structure ensures consistency across the Encyclopedia while preserving the analytical voice of each contributor.
The Encyclopedia is a living document. Entries will be updated as the law develops, and new terms will be added as practice and regulation evolve. CCCPL's editorial team at RGNUL oversees the review, quality control, and publication of all contributions.
About CCCPL, RGNUL
The Centre for Competition and Consumer Protection Law is a specialised research centre at Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Punjab, Patiala. CCCPL was established to foster rigorous scholarship, practice-oriented research, and institutional engagement at the intersection of competition law and consumer protection law in India. The Centre produces research, organises conferences and training programmes, and maintains active engagement with regulatory institutions including the Competition Commission of India.
The Encyclopedia on Competition Law is CCCPL's most ambitious public-facing initiative to date: a contribution to the legal infrastructure of Indian competition law, not merely to scholarship about it.
The Encyclopedia belongs to the field. It is built by practitioners, scholars, and economists who believe that shared vocabulary is the foundation of serious legal analysis.
Interested in contributing an entry? Write to us at cccpl@rgnul.ac.in with the subject line Encyclopedia Contribution: [Your Term].
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