The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) will hear Goggle’s appeal in the Competition Commission of India’s (CCI) Android ruling matter on February 15-17.
This was decided by the NCLAT Bench comprising Chairperson Ashok Bhushan and Member (Technical) Alok Srivastava on Monday. It now transpires that this same Bench will hear Google’s appeal and not the NCLAT Competition Bench.
It maybe recalled that the tech giant on January 24 this year filed an application before the NCLAT seeking an expedited hearing in the matter to ensure its timely disposal in line with the directions of the Supreme Court (SC).
While declining to interfere with the NCLAT order of January 4, the SC in its ruling on January 19 had directed the Appellate Tribunal to dispose Google’s appeal by March 31.
The SC had also declined to grant stay on the ten non-monetary directions issued by Competition Commission of India (CCI) in its October 20 ruling last year. The Apex Court, however, extended the period of compliance on CCI’s ruling by another week, and this period expired on January 26.
It may be recalled that NCLAT, on January 4, declined to give an interim stay against the CCI ruling and agreed to admit appeal on pre-deposit of 10 per cent of the overall penalty of ₹1,337 crore. Google went on an appeal before SC against this NCLAT order.
Google contended that NCLAT had erred in summarily rejecting its request for a stay on the ten non-monetary directions (Remedial Directions) on an inadequate and unjustifiable reason.
The tech giant also contended that the Tribunal had erred in making the admission of the company’s NCLAT appeal against the Commission’s Order subject to a pre-deposit amount.
