Ergo Update

By way of a notification dated 2 January 2021 (Notification), the Labour Department, Government of Karnataka, has permitted all shops and commercial establishments employing 10 or more persons to remain open for all days of the week throughout the year for a period of 3 years from the date of publication of the Notification in the Official Gazette*. The move comes after the state government’s imposition of night curfew in view of the spread of the new variant of SARS-CoV-2 and its subsequent withdrawal in the wake of widespread criticism.

To facilitate uniform, Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance requirements for all legal entities, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on 18 December 2020, amended the Master Direction - Know Your Customer Direction dated 25 February 2016 (Master Directions) (Amendment).

On 8 December 2020, the Ministry of Finance, Government of India notified the Foreign Exchange Management (Non-debt Instruments) (Fourth Amendment) Rules, 2020 (NDI Amendment Rules). The NDI Amendment Rules (i) notified increase in the sectoral cap for foreign direct investment (FDI) in the defence sector to 74%; and (ii) issued certain clarifications on the present policy on investments from countries sharing land borders with India.

Keeping in line with its focus to streamline the debt public issue process, across the gamut of securities, SEBI issued a circular on 23 November 2020 (Circular), introducing the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) mechanism as an additional mode for making online applications for public issues of various debt securities such as debentures, non-convertible redeemable preference shares, securitised debt instruments and municipal debt securities.

Following the footsteps of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh (refer to our Ergo), the state of Tamil Nadu has also amended its laws to restrict online gaming within its territory. The Honourable Governor of Tamil Nadu promulgated the Tamil Nadu Gaming and Police Laws (Amendment) Ordinance 2020 on 20 November 2020 (Ref: Tamil Nadu Ordinance Number 11 of 2020) (Ordinance). The Ordinance amends the Tamil Nadu Gaming Act, 1930 (TN Gaming Act) and extends its territorial scope to cover the entire state of Tamil Nadu.

In a positive development, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) has removed the Non-Compete Covenants (NCCs) disclosure requirement from merger filings. To that effect, the CCI amended the Competition Commission of India (Procedure in regard to the transaction of business relating to combinations) Regulations, 2011 on 26 November 2020 (Amendment).

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) vide its circular dated 9 November 2020 has introduced revised standard operating procedures (Revised SOP) to process foreign direct investment (FDI) proposals.

Compounding of contraventions under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 (FEMA) is governed by the Foreign Exchange (Compounding Proceedings) Rules, 2000 and the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Master Direction on Compounding of Contraventions under FEMA, 1999 dated 1 January 2016 (Compounding Direction).

The increased defaults by a few financial institutions and the complications faced by debenture trustees in expeditious enforcement of collateral for debt securities has prompted the securities market regulator, Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to review its regulatory framework for listed / “to be” listed debt securities and public issue of debt securities and debenture trustees to plug certain loopholes.

The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) on 13 November 2020 issued the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (Liquidation Process) (Fourth Amendment) Regulations, 2020 (Amendment) which introduced seminal changes to the liquidation regime under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC). The Amendment has been introduced on the back of the discussion paper issued by IBBI on 26 August 2020 on Corporate Liquidation Process (Discussion Paper).