The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has appointed its first formal panel of external legal advisers and six firms, with start-up law firms Advaya Legal making the cut in Mumbai, Canpisce & Co and Verus Advocates in Delhi, and Fox Mandal & Co winning the mandate to advise in the High Court of Calcutta.

According to the announcement that was made around 28 August on the CCI’s website, Advaya Legal founding partner Ramesh Vaidyanathan would handle the CCI’s Mumbai work, while Verus founder Krishnayan Sen and Rishad Chowdhary would work for the CCI in Delhi.

Canpisce & Co and its partners Anju Jain and Hitesh Sachar are also on the Delhi panel of firms.

Fox Mandal & Co Noida senior associates Swati Sinha and Vijay Kumar won the Kolkata panel place, while KNG Partners and Lexus Partners will be the CCI’s law firms in Nagpur and Kerala respectively.

Nine advocates have also been appointed to the CCI’s panel (see list below).

One lawyer at one of the appointed firms admitted that the appointment was a double-edged sword. “It’s kind of a trade off, you kind of take a calculated risk. Purely on the transaction side you would not be able to advise [some clients or on some deals]. If you do advise and it does attract CCI attention and it falls into a litigation scenario [you’d end up in a conflict].”

Big firms with established competition practices would not have been able to win a panel place because they were already advising clients against the CCI, said the lawyer.

But for the smaller firms the three-year empanelment was an “exciting opportunity” to advise and represent the CCI on “very complex” matters and issues against larger firms.

Fees are expected to be lower than those generally paid by the private sector but attractive when compared to other government work.

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List of CCI empanelled advocates:

1. Ms. Anupam Sanghi

2. Mr. Brijender Chahar

3. Mr. Sudhir Kulshreshtha

4. Mr.Rajiv Saxena

5. Mr. Pankaj Seth

6. Mr.Balbir Singh

7. Mr. Arjun Krishnan

8. Ms. Soni Singh

9. Mr. Ankit Jain