Further, the draft competition Bill is also expected to be ready by winter session of Parliament. This was disclosed by secretary, Department of Company Affairs, PL Sanjeeva Reddy on Tuesday who was speaking on the sidelines of a conference on competition law organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

Work on drafting the competition Bill is already on and we should be ready to introduce it in the winter session of the Parliament, Reddy said.

He added that the time period for completion of the draft Bill will not be extended as requested by the core group working on the Bill, since the government wants to have the law in place at the earliest.

Reddy said there is a need for the competition law to be flexible, dynamic and responsive. He stressed the need for a stiffer and fiercer domestic competition as a precursor to global competition.

A draft report on a separate Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act would be finalised within the next one week. Once the the report is finalised, it will be put across on the Internet, Reddy said.

Jairam Ramesh, secretary, economic affairs cell of All India Congress Committee said the competition law would not be effective without changes in the Companies Act. There is a need to isolate from the companies Bill those provisions that are directly related to the competition law.

The report on Indian GAAP is being prepared by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), which will submit its report by the month-end.

ICAI is in the process of standardising and harmonising Indian Accounting Standards on the lines of the US GAAP and UK GAAP. ICAI is working on this, and has already finalised around 25 of the 45 standards to be formulated, Reddy said.

Addressing the seminar, Competition Committee chairman SVS Raghavan stressed the need for putting in place a competition policy, but sought more time from the government. There is tremendous pressure on the government to submit the Bill in the monsoon session. But it is better to wait for the recommendations from the trade and business chambers and from the public before finalising the law, he said. He called upon the business chambers to come up with specific recommendations on mergers and acquisitions.

Ramesh suggested that a time gap of 12 to 18 months should be given between enactment and actual enforcement of the competition Bill in order to give the government time to set up suitable institutional structure and select right people to manage it.

Reddy said that supporting laws like Bankruptcy Law and amendments to the Companies Bill would be in place before the competition Bill is enacted. He added that the government was trying to infuse compatibility among the different laws having a bearing on competition law.