Unfair trade practice should attract huge penalities:Sirpurkar

Companies indulging in unfair trade practice should be punished with huge penalties, Competition Appellate Tribunal chairman Justice V S Sirpurkar said today.
He said that "fairness is the crux of competition law, and has to be followed by the corporate world".
"Competition law decides the ethics of competition. The crux of competition law is fairness (in market practices). The moment you divorce ethics, you are going to be unfair and when you are unfair, you should see huge penalties being imposed," Justice Sirpurkar, who last year retired as Supreme Court judge, said.
He was speaking at a conference here on 'Competition law in India' organised by a law firm Nishith Desai Associates and Jindal Global Law School.

He also emphasised that though Indian Constitution promises social, political and economic justice, very few understood the ramifications of the term economic justice.
He said India woke up very late to the competition laws in form of Monopolistic and Restrictive Trade Practice Act in 1969 and the competition Act which was brought in 2002 became actually effective only in 2009.

Varsity's Vice Chancellor Dr C Raj Kumar also emphasised on the interdisciplinary interactions between streams such as law, economy and sociology to strengthen competition law.
Pradeep Mehta, Secretary General of Consumer Unity & Trust Society (CUTS International) also opined that India requires economists sitting in judiciary to decide cases which under competition laws as they are overlapping with the economics.

He also said there was need for training judges who decide the matters in competition law and stressed that many a times the cases which fall within the domain of consumer forums come to the competition commission and therefore there is need for education on this aspect.
The conference, which was attended by varsity students and also the inhouse counsels of companies like Tata Steel and Mitsubishi, was also video-addressed by Eduardo Perez, Chairman of International Competition Network.