Introduction
In August and September, Mumbai streets fill with idols and festive crowds as devotees seek Lord Ganesha's blessings. Famous pandals like Lalbaugcha Raja and Chinchpoklicha Chintamani have devotees waiting in queues for up to sixteen hours to get darshan. Several corporate companies and FMCG brands fight for the advertising space outside the pandals, which will come down in eleven days. What begins as a religious festival of Lord Ganesha has over decades grown a commercial skin around its devotional aspect.
This raises a question: whether the religious character of a Ganpati mandal places its commercial dealings beyond the reach of the Competition Act, 2002. The answer is no. The religious character of a mandal does not automatically shield its commercial activities from competition law. Where mandals compete for sponsorships, advertising space and brand visibility, their conduct may fall under the Act. This depends on whether they fulfill the statutory requirements essential to come under the Act.
The Ganpati Festival as an Economic Ecosystem
Looking at the commercial aspect, popular mandals get millions of footfall in 10 days. That footfall converts into TV and digital coverage, which gets converted into advertisers' interest, which converts into sponsorship contracts running into crores. For example, Lalbaugcha Raja has been sponsored by Reliance, while Chintamani has been associated with the Adani Group. Similarly, some mandals, such as the GSB Seva Mandal, have partnered with several banks. This turns a religious gathering into a major commercial platform where crowd size and public attention help mandals attract corporate funding. This is a recurring, professionally managed revenue cycle with dedicated sponsorship teams, rate cards, and multi-year brand contracts.
Are Ganpati Mandals “Enterprises”?
The most important question that must be answered: is the mandal an “enterprise” under Section 2(h) of the Act?
Section 2(h) is deliberately functional as opposed to status-based. It captures any person or association engaged in the production, supply, distribution, or provision of services of any kind, including economic activity, regardless of legal form. Charitable trusts, cooperative societies, and even statutory or not-for-profit bodies have been held to be enterprises when they engage in economic activity. The CCI order to the Board of Control for Cricket in India as an enterprise despite its not-for-profit, sports-board character, as it dealt commercially in media and franchise rights, is important in this aspect. The principle transfers directly that legal form and stated purpose are not vital in deciding an enterprise.
A Ganpati mandal is typically an unregistered association or registered public trust. Its immersion procession, aarti, and community feeding are not economic activity in any meaningful sense, there is no market for devotional worship. The same mandal, when it sells hoarding space around its pandal, signs an exclusive sponsorship deal, licenses broadcast or streaming rights to its darshan, or monetises merchandising, is engaged in economic activity indistinguishable in substance from any commercial event organiser. The correct approach is functional segregation: the mandal is not an enterprise in its entirety, but the commercial slice of its conduct can be assessed as if it were.
Defining the Relevant Market
The market definition under Sections 2(r) and 19(5)-(7) involves product and geographic dimensions, tested on demand-side substitutability.
Possible product markets include festival sponsorship rights, outdoor advertising and digital or streaming rights in relation to major Ganpati pandals. The key question is whether an advertiser denied space at a major mandal would switch to another option, such as a highway hoarding, or whether festival visibility is essential to its campaign. If advertisers can easily switch, the market may include general outdoor advertising. If they cannot, the market may be limited to festival sponsorship.
Geographic market definition is equally contested. A narrow view would confine the market to Mumbai's marquee mandals, given the singular scale of footfall, media saturation, and civic visibility no other city replicates. A broader view might treat this as one segment within a pan-India market for high-footfall religious-event advertising, comparable to Kumbh Mela or other large congregations. Both are defensible starting points; the correct answer is fact-specific and would turn on actual advertiser behaviour and switching patterns, precisely the kind of empirical exercise the CCI is equipped to conduct.
Anti-Competitive Agreements
Assuming enterprise status and a defined market, coordination among mandals, whether direct or through an association, raises several anti-competitive agreements concerns.
The first concern is price fixing. This happens when rival mandals agree on a minimum rate for sponsorship or advertising. The agreement can be formal or informal.
The second concern is market allocation. This arises when mandals create different categories of sponsors; for example, one focuses on telecom companies and the other on food and beverage companies. This has the effect of mandals never competing against each other for the same brand and thus sponsors losing out on any bidding competition.
The third problem is collective refusal to deal which arises when an association puts a particular vendor or sponsor on a blacklist for dealing with a 'rival' mandal. The CCI dealt with a similar situation when film exhibitors joined together to boycott certain producers.
The fourth problem relates to exclusive arrangements, which are typically vertical i.e., between the mandal and a sponsor. For instance, a sponsor's contract may prohibit the mandal from dealing with a competing brand. These agreements are not per se illegal. Section 3(4) which addresses exclusivity, has a rule of reason approach, i.e., the CCI will be examining the pros and cons of such an agreement.
The fifth problem is concerned with information exchange where mandals may be sharing sponsorship figures, sponsor names, or rate cards in the association forum which could be an indication of some level of coordination without an express agreement.
The first three problems are horizontal agreements between rivals. Section 3(3) assumes that these have an adverse impact on competition. Thus, the burden of proof is on the mandals to justify the arrangement. The CCI can examine these kinds of agreements under anti-competitive agreements.
Abuse of Dominance
Section 4 of the Act refers to enterprises that possess dominance in the market. It must be noted that dominance in itself is not against the law, but the exploitation of such dominance is illegal. The law defines an enterprise as dominant if it has the capacity to act independently of its competitors or to influence them in its favor.
Does this mean that a mandal like Lalbaugcha Raja or GSB Seva Mandal can be dominant in a well-defined market? In a narrow market, the argument is definite. While there are only a handful of marquee mandals, there are thousands of small pandals in the background whose revenues are lower. No other mandal can give an advertiser the same reach to the target audience. Hence, if a brand wants to reach out to these crowds, it has no other option but to depend on this mandal. So, if a mandal is dominant, it can exploit its position by being discriminatory towards its sponsors and unfair towards them. It can also use its power in the sponsorship market to take over a nearby market, such as festival merchandise or licensed content.
The Association Problem
The mandals' coordination happens through bodies formed to manage traffic routes, immersion schedules, and civic safety which are legitimate and socially valuable form of self-regulation that municipal authorities encourage. The difficulty arises when the same platform is repurposed to standardise sponsorship tariffs, set floor prices for advertising, or condition municipal or commercial cooperation on adherence to collectively fixed rates. The line is functional: coordination addressing genuine public-order externalities is defensible; coordination that fixes price, allocates markets, or restricts output among otherwise competing mandals isn't because it occurs under the banner of a cultural coordination committee
Cultural and Religious Character versus Competition Law
Professional bodies and regulatory associations with clear public and non-commercial mandates such as chartered accountants' and medical practitioners' associations among them have been scrutinised where their conduct touched commercial terms of practice. The test applied is whether the specific conduct amounts to economic activity capable of restricting competition, not whether the body is professional, charitable or religious. Applied here, the immersion procession, the aarti, and community feeding remain wholly outside the Act's reach, as there is no market in devotion. The sponsorship contract, advertising hoarding and the streaming-rights licence are commercial display dressed in festive colours. Mandals earn money from sponsors, advertisers and streaming platforms. These deals are business transactions and the festive dress-up does not prevent the commission to step in.
The Policy Problem
Any enforcement approach must guard against overreach, so that the Comission targets commercial conduct and leaves religious and community activity alone. The overwhelming majority of neighbourhood mandals rely on modest, goodwill-based local. These neighbourhood mandals get sponsorship from their local neighbourhood, shops nearby, and devotees' donations. The Act's AAEC threshold and the Section 19(4) dominance factors already build in proportionality: trivial, localised, non-recurring arrangements will fail to clear the evidentiary bar. Regulators and courts should not treat this commercial reach as a lapse. The concern is confined to situation with genuine market power and demonstrable competitive harm, and should never touch the practice of sponsorship which funds public festivity and civic amenity.
Conclusion: Towards a Working Framework
The analysis suggests a three-step framework for distinguishing legitimate sponsorship practice from conduct that, competition law should address. First, a functional segregation test to isolate the commercial layer of a mandal's activity from its devotional core. Second, a market power assessment that defines the relevant product and geographic market with evidentiary rigour and whether the mandal or coordinating association behaves as a price-maker rather than a price-taker within it. Third, a conduct test that examines whether the specific arrangement (price fixing, allocation, exclusion, discriminatory access, or leveraging) produces an appreciable adverse effect.
Devotion and the market have always coexisted at Ganpati festivals; what competition law asks is that when devotion is monetised at scale, the resulting commercial conduct answers to the same rules that govern every other market in which enterprises compete for a sponsor's rupee