Welcome to The Bridge! Regulatory orders shape markets, govern disputes, and test the rule of law, yet their quality rarely gets the scrutiny it deserves. The Bridge is TrustBridge’s window into the quasi-judicial work of India’s regulators: how they decide, and how they could decide better.

Introduction

What could Grasim Industries Limited (NSE: GRASIM) (“Grasim”) do with Rs. 30.16 crores over 6.14 years?

At a risk-free rate of about 7%, this money would have amounted to about Rs. 45 crore over that duration. Even a boring old fixed deposit with the State Bank of India would have yielded Rs. 13.3 crores in interest. These calculations do not even take into account the legal fees and associated costs of prosecuting a high-stakes regulatory dispute, and the time of the personnel involved. This is time and money that can’t be used for productive purposes.

That’s the price we pay for a poorly drafted regulatory order.

Let that sink in.

Why do we ask such a question? And why do we say this cost is attributable to poor order writing?

Because on May 5, 2026, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (the “NCLAT”) set aside an order of the Competition Commission of India (the “CCI”) dated March 16, 2020, in which the CCI had imposed a penalty of Rs. 301.61 crores on Grasim. The NCLAT also directed the CCI to consider the matter afresh.1 According to Grasim’s Annual Report,2 the company had obtained a stay on the operation of the CCI’s order by depositing Rs. 30.16 crores with the NCLAT. This means that for the 6.14 years between the original CCI order and the NCLAT order that remanded it, Grasim would effectively have been unable to productively deploy this sum of Rs. 30.16 crores. Instead of using it to produce more goods, or hire more workers, this amount was locked up so that the penalty might be paid on short notice, if required. Note that the matter has not reached a conclusion yet - the CCI will reconsider the matter, it may well impose a penalty again, and a fresh appeal against that order (and a second appeal, and several interim applications) might be waiting in the wings. But for the moment, let’s think of this as a ‘one order, one appeal’ story.

Could this unproductive, undesirable outcome have been avoided? We apply a subset of ‘Good Order Writing’ indicators developed by TrustBridge to examine whether the initial CCI order might have been better written, and how such problems can be avoided. This subset of indicators forms part of a set of 68 indicators to measure the completeness and quality of regulators’ adjudicatory orders based on our paper.3 These indicators are classified into four overlapping categories: structural, informational, substantive and stylistic, and are assigned weighted scores on a scale of 0 to 1.

We first provide a summary overview of the CCI and NCLAT orders, and then demonstrate how the subset of indicators could have helped avoid this situation. Finally, we examine whether the adoption of such indicators, as well as other tools and practices to assist good order writing, could lead to positive results.

Summary overview of orders

The CCI order4 resulted from an information filing against Grasim and three other entities, alleging that Grasim had abused its dominant position as the country’s largest producer and seller of Viscose Staple Fibre, a violation punishable under S. 4 of the Competition Act, 2002 (the “Act”).

The date when the information was filed before the CCI is not available in the CCI’s order. However, the CCI passed an order on November 10, 2016 under S. 26(1) of the Act, directing the Director General (“DG”) to investigate the matter. The DG submitted its investigation report on March 27, 2018. This means that while the gap between the CCI’s and the NCLAT’s order is over six years, the matter as a whole has been in controversy for about a decade.

The CCI order includes a detailed description of the DG’s investigation, and the findings included in its investigation report. It notes that the DG’s report found violations of Ss. 4(2)(a)(ii) and 4(2)(d) read with S. 4(1) of the Act, but did not find any information or material in its investigation to indicate that a case was made out under S. 4(2)(e) of the Act against Grasim. Upon a reading of the NCLAT’s order, however, it would appear that the CCI order does not provide a comprehensive, accurate overview of the DG’s findings.

The CCI considered the DG’s report, and forwarded a non-confidential version to the Informant and Grasim so that they could file their suggestions or objections. Grasim’s objections to the DG’s report are described in detail in the CCI order. However, there is no information in the CCI order that suggests Grasim was provided the opportunity for a hearing before the CCI took its decision.

The CCI order responds to Grasim’s submissions, and, on the face of matters, vigorously defends the DG’s report. It eventually agrees with the DG’s findings that Grasim violated Ss. 4(2)(a)(ii) and 4(2)(d) read with S. 4(1) of the Act, and imposes a penalty of Rs. 301.61 crores against Grasim.

In its appeal against the CCI’s order, Grasim argued that the CCI had deviated from the findings in the DG’s report, but did not provide Grasim a notice declaring that it proposed to do so, nor did it provide Grasim the opportunity for a fair hearing in which it might present its case. Grasim sought to have the CCI order set aside on this ground of failure to adhere to the principles of natural justice.

The NCLAT considered the effect of two prior decisions of the erstwhile Competition Appellate Tribunal (the “COMPAT”),5 and accepted Grasim’s contention that the CCI could not have passed an order in which it deviated from the DG’s report, without offering Grasim the opportunity to present its case at a fair hearing. It set aside the CCI’s order, and directed it to consider the matter afresh, with the direction that it provide Grasim an opportunity for a hearing “wherever the Commission differs with the findings of the DG”.

Applying ‘Good Order Writing’ indicators

Could this reversal, and the lost opportunity costs of the penalty imposition have been avoided? Our analysis of the order against our benchmarks suggests that there were multiple missing pieces. So yes, these problems could have been avoided had the CCI considered the following indicators at the time of drafting its order:

1. Is there a list of dates of hearings or a link to this and other procedural information?

2. Does the order summarise parties’ oral arguments at hearings?

3. Are the results of the investigation summarised?

4. Is the analysis well-reasoned?

5. Does the order cite previous COMPAT, NCLAT, or SC orders?

We expect that the resultant order would have been more complete and more likely to withstand challenge in appeal. The benefits of these indicators are described below.

Conclusion and recommendations

The use of order-writing-assistance methods, such as TrustBridge’s Good Order Writing indicators, could have helped avoid the problem created by the CCI’s order in the Grasim matter, and its remand by the NCLAT. These indicators can be used as part of an ‘Order Review Tool’ (see video below), or even as a simple checklist. We suggest that regulators consider how they could address the demands of order writing as carefully as they consider the requirements of the law applicable to their sector.

Another way to avoid controversies like this would be the development and use of a ‘precedent bank’ that order writers may refer to. Such a precedent bank would have brought the applicable COMPAT orders to the adjudicator’s attention. The CCI may then have conducted proceedings in a different manner, by issuing Grasim a notice and providing them an opportunity for a hearing. Alternatively, the order could have explained why those decisions were not applicable in the present situation, giving it a stronger chance of withstanding challenge in appeal.

We point out the opportunity costs of poor order writing in one instance; but consider what the aggregate value of such practices across regulators would be over the period of a single year, over a few years, or over a decade. And how little in comparison it would take to avoid such costs - LLMs and Generative AI make solutions like the Order Review Tool accessible, and regulators and researchers have the domain expertise to make such tools capable and effective. But first we need to acknowledge the scale of the problem, and open our minds to the possibilities that imaginative solutions can offer.

- The authors are researchers at TrustBridge, and would like to thank Renuka Sane for her suggestions and guidance, and Upasa Borah for her assistance in reviewing the calculations of opportunity costs.

CITATION

Natasha Aggarwal and Bhavin Patel, 2026. “How much does a poorly-written order cost?”, The Bridge, TrustBridge Rule of Law Foundation

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References

1. Natasha Aggarwal, Bhavin Patel & Karan Singh, 2025. “A guide to writing good regulatory orders,” Working Papers, Trustbridge Rule of Law Foundation.

2. Board of Control for Cricket in India v. Competition Commission of India, 2015 SCC OnLine Comp. AT 238.

3. Grasim Industries Limited, Annual Report, available at: https://www.grasim.com/Upload/PDF/grasim-integrated-annual-report-2024-25.pdf

4. In Re: XYZ and Association of Man Made Fibre Industry of India and others (Case No. 62 of 2016) (CCI Order dated 16 March 2020).

5. Interglobe Aviation Ltd. (IndiGoAirlines) v. Competition Commission of India, Appeal No.07/2016.

Welcome to The Bridge! Regulatory orders shape markets, govern disputes, and test the rule of law, yet their quality rarely gets the scrutiny it deserves. The Bridge is TrustBridge’s window into the quasi-judicial work of India’s regulators: how they decide, and how they could decide better.

Introduction

The International Financial Services Centres Authority (the “IFSCA”) is the statutory regulatory authority (“SRA”) in charge of developing and regulating financial products, services and institutions in India’s Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (“GIFT City”). The IFSCA is a unified regulator, in that the powers of the Reserve Bank of India (“RBI”), the Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”), the Insurance Regulatory Development Authority of India (“IRDAI”), and the Pension Fund Regulatory Development Authority of India (“PFRDA”) with respect to financial institutions, services, and products in IFSCs are all vested in the IFSCA. This suggests that the IFSCA has a tougher role to play than sector-specific regulators, since it has to evolve and execute a quasi-judicial function that combines the needs of the various complex sectors under its control, imposing greater demands on the rigour of its order-writing processes.

As one of India’s newer SRAs, the IFSCA has a short history of issuing adjudicatory orders. Their website currently lists eight documents in the Enforcement section (seven orders, the earliest dated 29 July 2024 and the latest, 6 April 2026, and one warning letter). The IFSCA made headlines recently when, in a first-of-its-kind action for the new SRA, it cancelled the broker-dealer registration of String AI IFSC Private Limited.1 This is seen as a significant move on the regulator’s part, potentially signalling an escalation in its enforcement actions, and moving away from the ‘marketing mode’ stance that market participants suggest it had hitherto adopted. An examination of the regulator’s enforcement practices would therefore be timely.

Data and methods

TrustBridge has developed rigorous methods to evaluate the effectiveness and quality of SRAs’ quasi-judicial process through an examination of their regulatory orders.2 This may also be the only external way to examine these functions, since these are the only documents related to the adjudication process published by Indian SRAs - they typically do not make their enforcement manuals or conventions of procedure (where these exist) publicly available.3 We apply these methods to the IFSCA’s adjudicatory orders, with a view to pointing out early opportunities for course correction, and with the hope that this will prevent incipient problems from cascading into larger systemic issues.

We have developed a set of 68 indicators to measure the completeness and quality of regulators’ adjudicatory orders based on our paper on ‘good order writing’.4 These are classified into four overlapping categories: structural, informational, substantive and stylistic, and are assigned weighted scores on a scale of 0 to 1. Examples of this classification and weighted scores are:

We collected the seven adjudicatory orders available on the IFSCA’s website, and processed them using Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.6 Large Language Model.5 Claude was prompted to review each order and record its responses, along with the reasoning for its responses. The prompts are available in Annexure 1. The results (available here) were then verified by a human reviewer with expertise in reviewing Indian SRAs’ regulatory orders.

Results

Notably, orders issued in 2024 and 2025 were authored by a single officer, while all orders in 2026 were issued by three-member benches of the Quasi-Judicial Authority for Enforcement (QJAE).

The average score for all seven orders across the years is 74.65%. By way of context, in a previous study, we created a sample set of orders issued in 2024 comprising:

• 16 orders (5% sample) by SEBI, for which the average weighted score was 65.1%;

• 5 of 17 orders by IRDAI for which the average weighted score was 58%; and

• A 2019 order by PFRDA (no orders were issued in 2024), for which the weighted score was 77.3%

At an aggregate level, all seven orders satisfy 39 of our 68 indicators, suggesting a consistent baseline of compliance with core elements of good order-writing. The average over the years is represented below. The figure shows that the score in 2024 for one order is 76.4%; the average score for two orders in 2025 is 79.2%, and the average score for four orders in 2026 has reduced to 71.8%.

The score for each order is represented below. Order 1, issued in 2024, scored 76.4% on our indicators. Orders 2 and 3, both issued in 2025, scored 76.1% and 82.2%, respectively. This shows that the performance of orders peaked in May 2025, followed by a gradual decline in 2026. Orders 4, 5, 6 and 7 were all issued in 2026, and the scores range from 69.5% to 75.6%. The lower scores in 2026 are primarily because those orders do not clearly state the issues involved or summarise the uncontested material facts or the disputed material facts.

What do the IFSCA orders do well?

The IFSCA’s orders perform well on structural organisation and prefatory information. They are generally well-structured, identify applicable legal provisions, and set out procedural history in a clear and traceable manner. They also perform well in setting out parties’ written submissions and engaging with the applicable statutory framework. Each order records the salient arguments and provides a reasoned analysis.

What could be better?

Certain indicators are not satisfied by any order. These include:

1. A concise statement of the main question,

2. Names of counsel (or a statement regarding absence of representation),

3. A summary of disputed material facts,

4. A description of remedies available to affected parties (such as an appeal), and

5. Publication in a machine-readable format.

While most orders summarise procedural history adequately, three do not record or summarise parties’ oral arguments at the hearing. Moreover, there are recurring limitations in the treatment of facts: orders typically do not provide a clear summary of uncontested material facts and, as mentioned above, none summarise disputed material facts.

Engagement with Supreme Court precedent is minimal - only one order imposed a penalty and therefore cited the Supreme Court’s decision in Adjudicating Officer, SEBI v Bhavesh Pabari (Civil appeal 11311/2013). This may be because the remaining orders did not involve issues that require precedential application, and a more effective evaluation of the IFSCA’s performance on this indicator requires a larger sample of orders.

Performance is weakest in relation to justifications for sanction determination and quantification. Only one order explains the harm caused by the violation, and none explain the method used to determine the quantum or duration of the sanction. Similarly, only one order sets out the factors considered in determining the sanction, and only one addresses whether the imposed sanction is proportional to the violation.

Recommendations

Across all seven orders, there is consistency in structural clarity and procedural completeness. Orders are generally well-organised, identify the relevant statutory framework, and engage with parties’ submissions. The analysis sections meet a basic threshold of reasoning. This is non-trivial, particularly for a relatively new, unified regulator operating across complex sectors. Many established regulators fail to maintain comparable consistency.

The fact that the IFSCA satisfies a substantial proportion of the indicators across all orders suggests that a foundational template for good order-writing has taken hold. However, the IFSCA’s orders demonstrate the need for improvement in some aspects:

Conclusion

Overall, the IFSCA’s adjudicatory orders suggest a regulator that has successfully established the architecture of good decision-making. The trajectory is, in many respects, a positive one: the core elements are in place, and the gaps that remain are identifiable. The fact that these issues are visible at an early stage presents a valuable opportunity to embed stronger practices before such gaps in order-writing practices are institutionalised.

The fact that the IFSCA has only passed seven orders thus far, and that matters are at an early stage, also allows the opportunity of creating a well-indexed, searchable, and accessible database of orders that can be used as a precedent bank in later decision-making. This will help ensure consistency across orders and over time, and help the regulator present a consistent, coherent narrative in its orders that are better able to withstand challenge in appeal.

- The authors are researchers at TrustBridge, and would like to thank Renuka Sane for her suggestions and guidance.

CITATION

Natasha Aggarwal and Bhavin Patel, 2026. “Stitch in time: An early evaluation of the IFSCA’s adjudicatory orders”, The Bridge, TrustBridge Rule of Law Foundation

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Annexure 1

The following prompts were used in an Anthropic Claude Project. The Project was configured with a system prompt (reproduced below) that provided Claude with the evaluation framework and instructions. Individual orders were then uploaded and assessed one at a time using the user prompts below.

System prompt

You have been provided with a spreadsheet titled ‘20260316_GOW’ with the following columns: Column B contains a list of indicators, column C has notes corresponding to each indicator, column E has the possible responses corresponding to each indicator, and column F has the weights corresponding to each indicator. You have also been provided with a document titled ‘20260316_GOW_prompts,’ which contains instructions for some of the indicators listed in the spreadsheet and, in some cases, sample orders. The sample orders have been provided to you as PDFs.

I will upload orders to this project, and ask you to evaluate them against the good order writing metrics. Please return the responses in a spreadsheet format, with the reasons for each response recorded in a separate column.

User prompts

Prompt 1: Now, I will provide you with an order by the International Financial Services Centres Authority and you will assess this order against the good order writing metrics. Got it?

Prompt 2: Now evaluate this order by IFSCA.

Prompt 2 was repeated for each order.

References

Natasha Aggarwal and others, 2025, “Balancing Power and Accountability: An Evaluation of SEBI’s Adjudication of Insider Trading,” Working Paper, Trustbridge Rule of Law Foundation.

Natasha Aggarwal and others, 2025, “A Guide to Writing Good Regulatory Orders,” Working Paper, Trustbridge Rule of Law Foundation.

Natasha Aggarwal and others, 2025, “Can Technology Augment Order Writing Capacity at Regulators?,” Working Paper, Trustbridge Rule of Law Foundation.

Chitrakshi Jain and others, 2025, “Examining the Performance of ERCs at APTEL,” The Leap Blog.