Newsletter December 2025

Published: December 02, 2025

Dear Friends,

Greetings from the Centre for Regulatory Governance

From this month, the Centre for Regulatory Governance (CRG) will issue a monthly compendium of developments in the Indian regulatory space. We are most excited to bring this product for our well-wishers to get a one stop collection of these news developments. 

The Indian regulatory space is far too vast for anyone to trawl them daily or even intermittently, to keep abreast of the cornucopia of orders, observations and speeches by the chief executives and members of these institutions. Yet, for any business, investors, the public and even governments, within India and abroad this knowledge is essential. As we know, it is the regulators who decide on how each sector will pan out, the opportunities they will offer and those which shall get rejigged. 

On the first day of every month, therefore, we shall send this newsletter to your mailbox. We are clear that mailboxes are not meant for spamming so if something lands there, those must offer a strong value addition for you. These mailers seek to live up to that ideal. 

The CRG has been established in the Jindal Global Law School in the Jindal Global University, as an interdisciplinary institution for a reasoned understanding of the regulatory space. Every week the CRG researchers track these happenings at the various regulators. These happenings could be about how the regulators interact with the markets, the investors and of course with the government and the citizens. 

We have begun to put those reports out on our website as succinct summaries, each week, based on the collective understanding of our faculty members. I am sure, you have also begun to find these valuable. The monthly reports which we now roll out takes the process forward dramatically to bring all of them in one place to allow for easy reading and reference as significant aides to your busy workday. In addition, each month we shall issue a commentary on one topic that we, the researchers involved with CRG will be most happy to share with all our friends. We aim to buttress these with several more initiatives in the coming week, especially in the New Year. 

Naturally we shall be most keen to receive your opinion on these topics and more. These will also form part of the monthly newsletter. Please do write to us crg@jgu.edu.in

The topics we cover this time are:

• The government this month has released the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025, to make operational the Digital Data Protection Act, India’s data protection law, enacted by Parliament on 11 August 2023. The Rules were needed to offer investors clarity on how to use data in their business or even to develop products where the data can be the critical differentiator. 

• The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) Chairman flagged concerns over the low amount being settled in insurance claims, something peculiar when contrasted with the high rate of resolution rate of claims and the equally high growth rate of premiums received by the industry

• The significance of Indian Regulators needing to have independence in their functioning devoid of government interference was highlighted this month. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) sought clarifications from the Department of Telecom (DoT) on certain issues that the latter felt intruded on their regulatory turf. 

• SEBI has warned investors of a new product "Digital Gold" or "e-gold", promoted by several online platforms, as they were not regulated. This was an important development in the regulatory area, as new financial products get launched by institutions enticing customers through various schemes.

• The Food sector also came into focus when the FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) restricted the use of the name "ORS" in products launched by companies to only those that met WHO standards. The refusal of the High Court to entertain any stay on the order of the Regulator and giving it full independence to enforce it, highlights the quasi-judicial power of a Statutory body.

• There was an important development on the RBI front. The World Bank has recommended that India transfer the Ministry of Finance's (MoF) appellate power over the RBI to an independent agency, a specialised judicial tribunal like the proposed Financial Sector Appellate Tribunal (FSAT). The core motivation is to ensure fairness, transparency, and regulatory autonomy. This transfer would dilute the concentration of legislative, executive, and judicial powers as well as those of making rules, supervising, and imposing penalties, all of which are now bundled within the RBI.

• In a remarkable evidence of policy adapting to circumstances, the India Government plans to dissolve a body it had set up as recently as 2021. The body will be replaced with a new one. Instead of Gati Shakti’s Network Planning Group an unified transport planning body is set to come up. The intention is to ensure minimal executive interference in India's Infrastructure growth.