NCLAT Principal Bench dismisses appeals against CCI's bid-rigging finding on the polyacetal protective-tubes suppliers to Indian Railways; reads 'punished accordingly' in Section 48(1) of the Competition Act 2002 (pre-2023 Amendment) to mean the individual penalty must match the enterprise penalty in scale, applied to the active partner's income.
On 7 April 2026 the Competition Commission held seventeen electrical contractors liable under s.3(3)(d) for cover bidding and bid rotation in APHCL tenders, but issued only a cease-and-desist direction under s.27(a) — calibrating contravention-finding against penalty-quantum where the contraveners are small enterprises with geographically circumscribed conduct.
A 2016 Delhi High Court division bench refused to read constitutional restraints into a click-wrap consent transaction but moulded transitional relief — and the case has been pending before a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court ever since.
The May 2026 NCLAT order setting aside the CCI's ₹301.6 crore penalty on Grasim Industries — on the procedural ground that the CCI failed to give the appellant notice of disagreement with the DG's findings — joins the April 2026 CCI directions for investigation into the Venkateshwara Hatcheries Group and the bid-rigging order against seventeen electrical contractors in the Assam Police Housing tenders. Read together with the closure of the Indigo / Air India cancellation-charges probe and the jurisdictional-boundary disposition in Roppen / Rapido, the cycle discloses the procedural and substantive contours of CCI practice as it stands at mid-2026.