Spare parts case: Final hearing on Tata, Mahindra plea in Oct

The Delhi High Court today fixed October 28 for final hearing a plea of two Indian car makers challenging provisions of Competition Act as well as a CCI order imposing a penalty on them for violating trade norms in after-services market and spare parts.
A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw also extended the stay on the order imposing penalty on Mahindra and Mahindra and Tata Motors till the next date of hearing.
While Mahindra had been ordered by CCI to pay a fine of over Rs 200 crore, Tata was slapped with an amount of Rs 1400 crore.

The court also asked the CCI to file counter affidavit within two weeks and directed the car makers to submit their rejoinder "within a week thereafter".
However, the judges made it clear to the auto majors that the stay order is only applicable to them.
On August 25, CCI had fined Mahindra, Tata and 12 other companies, Rs 2,554 crore for allegedly violating trade norms in the spare parts and after-services market and asked them to deposit within 60 days.

For each entity, the individual fine amounted to two per cent of their average turnover.
Besides the two, the other companies on which penalties have been imposed were, Mercedes Benz India Pvt Ltd, Toyota Kirloskar Motor Pvt. Ltd, Honda Cars India Ltd, Volkswagen India, Fiat Group Automobiles India Pvt. Ltd, Ford India Pvt. Ltd, General Motors India Pvt. Ltd, Nissan Motor India Pvt. Ltd, Hindustan Motors Ltd, BMW, Maruti Suzuki and Skoda Auto India Pvt. Ltd.

A single-judge bench of the high court had recently given three weeks interim protection from the CCI order to BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
The same bench had also stayed the operation of the order against Maruti.