The basic principle or the objective of the competition laws all over the world is to protect the consumers and to prevention such “practices that harm the normal routine market practices between the independent parties who aim or who are competing for a larger slice of the market. The Single Economic Doctrine lays down that irrespective of the legal status of two or more enterprises can be said to form a single entity for the purposes of competition law”. “The concept of the Single Economic Doctrine was enumerated by the European Commission in 1960s and now it has been accepted in India also. The main reason behind the evolution of the Doctrine is that a subsidiary does not take a decision independently, and when its parent company is involved in a particular business it is a normal course of business that they would decide together,” in fact it is the parent company that decides and the subsidiary follows and thus when they both agree together, they should not be treated differently but rather they should be treated as a single economic entity, as such an agreement cannot be said to be anticompetitive. In the present paper, the researcher will discuss upon how the SEE Doctrine has evolved all over the world especially by referring to European cases and the US cases. Further the paper will discuss upon how the SEE Doctrine evolved in India and it will also state as to the present scenario of the applicability of the Doctrine in various situations. Lastly the paper will try to critically analyse that whether the current applicability of the Doctrine is adequate or not. For the preparation of research paper, the author has mostly referred to the secondary resources like online journals, books etc. to which the author has access.

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