MEASURING THE EFFICACY OF LENIENCY PROGRAMME IN INDIA: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

AUTHOR – MR. UMANG GHILDYAL* & DR. SANGEETA TAAK**

* RESEARCH SCHOLAR, RAJIV GANDHI NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF LAW, PUNJAB

** ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, RAJIV GANDHI NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF LAW, PUNJAB

BEST CITATION – MR. UMANG GHILDYAL & DR. SANGEETA TAAK, MEASURING THE EFFICACY OF LENIENCY PROGRAMME IN INDIA: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS, INDIAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL REVIEW (IJLR), 5 (10) OF 2025, PG. 475-481, APIS – 3920 – 0001 & ISSN – 2583-2344

Abstract

Cartels are the supreme evil of antitrust. Cartels discourage competition in the market and harms the interests of the consumers. Cartoons hurt the freedom of trade carried on by market participants and transfer consumer surplus illegally from the consumers to the cartel participants. Well run leniency programmemes have the potential to detect and punish the cartel and its members through a carrot and stick approach varun cartel participants when they become leniency applicants are incentivised by lesser penalty in comparison to other cartel members. Cooperation by the leniency applicant during the investigative process and legal certainty for reduction of penalty are the pillars on which leniency programmes are run. Lesser penalty becomes appealing only when there is severity of sanctions and the identity and information provided by the leniency applicant is kept confidential. The authors will analyse these parameters and compare Indian legal position with that of more mature competition jurisdictions such as USA and EU.

Keywords: Cartel, leniency, CCI, DOJ