India’s anti-trust watchdog has finally got its sentinel.

The Centre has appointed Ravneet Kaur, a 1988 batch IAS from the Punjab cadre, as the chairperson of the Competition Commission of India (CCI).

The CCI — which has been handling multiple challenging cases particularly in the digital domain — has been headless since October 22 with the departure of Ashok Kumar Gupta.

Since then, CCI member has been the acting head. In fact, the panel has not had a quorum for the last seven months, since Gupta retired.

Kaur has been chosen to head the watchdog for five years or till she turns 65, whichever is earlier and will draw a monthly salary of Rs 4.5 lakhs without a house and car.

The appointment of the first woman CCI head comes at a crucial time the competition regulator’s power has been substantially widened and it has been probing anti-trust issues against some of the big-tech players. The government is also planning to come out with a digital competition law.

The cases are fraught with increasing complexity, with the CCI forced to defend its orders in both the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) and the Supreme Court.

The vacuum at the top has created a situation wherein the Delhi High Court had to invoke the doctrine of necessity to ask the CCI to take up a plea by Indian start-ups against Google.

A post-graduate in economics from Punjab University, Kaur has served across departments even though her focus area has been finance. Kaur spent a year as a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow at Cornell University.

She has been a consultant with International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC. At present, Kaur is special chief secretary and financial advisor in the Punjab government’s department of revenue and disaster Management.