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At best you will have a supportive role in merger filings - the regular kind. The contentious ones will get a good PR firm or lobby firm. For business they have more value add than competition lawyers. Competition lawyers themselves will be relegated to back end filing.
Its not a surprise the Committee on Finance chose legislative purgatory.
Competition is an extremely niche practice area which barely hires and has just 1-2 rainmaker partners across firms in India.
The most fun part of the practice is enforcement, which is completely dependent on the geopolitics of the American federal government vis-a-vis India. Regulators here will bite only if they feel emboldended enough to do so, otherwise they'd be content with meowing.
The most boring part of the practice is combination - you just sit and tally stuff.
That's all there is to it. The idea that there's some cutting edge antitrust practice efforts going on in India are not based in reality. This is something all competition associates are aware of to varying degrees.
The most consequential Act that affected competition law in India is not the DCB or even the 2023 Amendments.
Its the Finance Act 2017. It has wrecked competition law jurisprudence for a decade. For many, it looks like intentional sabotage.
We are still trying to unwind the disaster that private enforcement faces and not a single one has taken place in 16 years.
The most consequential decision that affected competition law jurisprudence is not decisions of the SC by SAIL or even Excel Crop.
Its Bharti Airtel. It confirmed to in-house counsels, which buttons to press and whom to rely on. Its not competition lawyers.
To this, the SC gave the obit for competition law with the obiter dicta in Schott Glass. Those who know, know.
Competition law in India is unserious and slowly becoming a farce. Like associates, the in-house counsels also know.
Buyer beware.
Slow demise of antitrust enforcement
Lawyers are ruining jurisprudence