New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear a plea of US tech giant Google against an order of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), thereby refusing to grant an interim stay on the competition regulator. The court also imposed a penalty worth Rs 1,337 crore on the NCLAT officials. The matter will be next heard on January 16.
A bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice P S Narasimha, while hearing the matter, took note of submissions from Google representative senior advocate A M Singhvi, and said that it will list the plea for hearing on Monday.
The senior lawyer said that extraordinary directions have been passed by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and the order has to be complied by January 19. There is no finding of abuse of dominance, he said.
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On 4th January, the NCLAT refused to grant relief to Google as it had shown no urgency in filing the appeal. NCLAT said that CCI passed an order in October and Google challenged it in December, which shows there was no urgency from the tech giant and hence no interim relief would be granted. It had further imposed a fine of Rs 1,337 crore as a penalty on Google, and had asked it to deposit 10 percent of the amount.
The NCLAT admitted the search giant's challenge to the CCI slapping a Rs 1,337.76 crore fine for abusing the dominant position of its Android smartphone operating system in the country. The CCI in October last year had asked Google to allow smartphone users on the Android platform to uninstall apps and let them select a search engine of their choice. That order was to become effective from January 19.
