CAIT hails HC order, asks Goyal to direct CCI probe into Amazon, Flipkart

The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has written to commerce minister Piyush Goyal, urging him to direct the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to “immediately” start a probe into the alleged antitrust practices of Flipkart and Amazon. 

On Friday, the Karnataka High Court dismissed a petition from Amazon and Flipkart requesting a stay on India’s antitrust watchdog CCI’s probe into both companies’ alleged anti-competitive practices. 

The two ecommerce companies had requested a stay on CCI’s probe, claiming that it didn’t have adequate evidence to launch an investigation. The case had been going on for a year. 

CAIT has also urged the commerce minister to issue a fresh Press Note replacing Press Note 2 of the FDI policy with a monitoring mechanism to ensure that the law of the land prevails and no one should dare to violate the policy, law or the rules.

In a press conference on Saturday, CAIT secretary general Praveen Khandelwal said the traders’ body will observe the week from June 14-21, 2021 as ‘Ecommerce Purification Week’. Several trade associations, on June 16, will handover a memorandum in the name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to their respective District Collectors urging the Union Government to take immediate steps to stop continued violations of the policy and the rules by Amazon, Flipkart and other similar foreign-funded ecommerce companies.

These ecommerce companies, “should provide a list of the top 10 sellers on their portal in the last five years which will reveal the fact that names of the same set of sellers will exist during these five years as the top sellers which are prominently related to them in one way or the other thereby consolidating the sales into few hands only. These foreign ecommerce entities are habituated to make tall claims about helping and assisting small and medium retailers while ruthlessly destroying the very fabric of our traditional Kirana and small merchants,” Khandelwal said in a press note. 

Amazon and Flipkart have consistently faced allegations from sellers’ associations for preferential treatment of select sellers’ entities, in which these etailers purportedly own a stake, either direct or indirect.