Supreme Court Course Corrects The Merger Control Anomaly-sets Aside CCI's Penalty On Amazon

INTRODUCTION

1 On May 27, 2026 ¹ , the Supreme Court of India ("SC") set aside the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal ("NCLAT") order which upheld the Competition Commission of India’s (“CCI”) order (“CCI Order”) penalising Amazon.com NV Investment Holdings LLC ("Amazon") INR 202 crores (approx. USD 21 million) ²  inter alia for: (i) alleged misrepresentation and suppression of material facts in its CCI Filing (defined below); and (ii) alleged failure to disclose the interconnected nature of the transaction and related commercial arrangements. The SC’s findings are significant for Indian merger control jurisprudence as they clarify: (a) jurisdictional limits of the CCI on post-approval inquiry of combinations; (b) strict pigeon-hole tests for penalising parties for false statements and material omissions; and (c) the distinction between failure to notify and false statements or material omissions.