The CCI (Commitment) Amendment Regulations, 2026

The commitment mechanism had been in force for rather more than two years when the Commission amended its procedure. The Competition Commission of India (Commitment) Amendment Regulations, 2026, dated 18 August 2026, extend the window within which a commitment application may be filed from forty-five days to sixty days, and extend the overall period for the commitment process. The changes respond to the principal complaint made by parties and practitioners about the original scheme, which was that the decision had to be taken too quickly to be taken properly.

1. The Difficulty the Amendment Addresses

A commitment application must be filed early, before the Director General reports, and that is the point of the mechanism: the object is to correct conduct before the investigation runs its course. The consequence is that the enterprise must decide whether to offer commitments at a stage when it has only the order under Section 26(1), which states a prima facie opinion rather than findings, and before it knows what the investigation will produce.

1. The decision is strategic and irreversible. An enterprise that lets the window pass cannot return to it; thereafter the only route is settlement, which requires payment.
2. The proposal must be worked out, not merely announced. Behavioural commitments require the enterprise to redesign contractual terms, ranking practices or access arrangements across a business, and often to consult the counterparties who will be affected.
3. Board and group approvals take time, particularly where the enterprise is part of a multinational group and the commitments will alter terms offered in several jurisdictions.
4. Forty-five days was tight for all three, and the practical effect was that the mechanism was available in theory and difficult to use in practice.

2. What the Amendment Does

• The filing window is extended from forty-five days to sixty days, giving the enterprise two months in which to assess its position, prepare a proposal and obtain the approvals it requires.
• The overall timeline for the commitment process is extended, which allows the Commission more room for the consultation of stakeholders and for requiring the proposal to be modified, both of which had proved to take longer than the original scheme allowed.
• The procedural framework is otherwise unchanged: the eligibility of Section 3(4) and Section 4 cases and the exclusion of cartels, the contents of the application, the consultation, the power to require modification, the non-appealability of the order, and revocation under Section 48C all remain as they were.

3. The Setting in Which the Change Was Made

Two circumstances are worth recording. The first is the Commission's own experience with these mechanisms: the settlement route produced its first order in the Android television matter in April 2025, and the commitment route had been used less, which suggested that the difficulty lay in the timeline rather than in the substance. The second is the pressure on the Commission's capacity, including vacancies in its membership, which makes resolution by commitment attractive to the institution as well as to the parties, since it disposes of a matter without an investigation report, a hearing and a contested order.

4. What the Amendment Does Not Change

• Cartels remain outside the mechanism. The exclusion is in Section 48B itself and cannot be altered by regulation.
• A commitment order is still not a finding, so it creates no precedent, and the criticism that these routes leave the law undeveloped in the areas where guidance is most needed is unaffected.
• The order remains non-appealable, so a third party affected by the commitments has no remedy under the Act.
• Revocation under Section 48C remains the only sanction for non-compliance, which is why the monitoring provisions of the General Regulations, 2024 matter as much as the commitment itself.

5. Related Topics and Provisions