India plans to use AI and advanced analytics to detect bid rigging and collusion in government procurement.
India must harness advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence to detect unfair practices such as bid rigging in government procurement, while strengthening institutional coordination between state auditors and competition regulators, said K. Sanjay Murthy, head of the Comptroller and Auditor General, or CAG, of India.
Murthy said that cartelization and bid rigging in public procurement impose severe, unnecessary costs on state resources. Competition enforcement and audit are complementary regulatory instruments in ensuring government marketplaces remain competitive, he said.
In the past, the Competition Commission of India, or CCI, had relied on CAG reports to identify red flags in public procurement and initiate investigations, Murthy said, highlighting the synergies between the two regulatory bodies.
The continued synergy between financial accountability and market fairness will remain the cornerstone of India’s economic resilience and nation-building, Murthy said, speaking at the CCI's annual day event in New Delhi on Wednesday.
In the digital age, market power is often derived from control over data and ecosystems rather than the traditional scale of production, Murthy said. Competition law has become a core element of India's economic governance, he added.
With fintech, logistics, e-commerce and green energy undergoing rapid structural transformations, Murthy said that integrating advanced analytics into public procurement software will significantly sharpen the detection of collusive bidding.
In her welcome address to mark the start of the CCI's 18th year, CCI chair Ravneet Kaur acknowledged the rapid evolution of digital markets and spoke of the comprehensive Market Study on AI and Competition, released in October 2025
While AI drives massive efficiencies, Kaur cautioned that it also introduces highly complex regulatory hurdles, including algorithmic collusion, system opacity and market concentration. The opacity of AI systems presents additional enforcement challenges, making it difficult to detect anticompetitive conduct, she said.
To tackle these modern bottlenecks, the CCI’s Advocacy Booklet 2026 includes a guidance note for corporations to self-audit their AI tools. Kaur also said the CCI is expanding its internal capacity, looking past traditional legal and economic experts to recruit specialized data scientists and forensic analysts.
Sources: MLex
