“It needs to be implemented taking care of the interests of all the stakeholders—users as well as the Industry,” MAIT said in the release adding that while the order will definitely help safeguard consumer interest and remove substandard products from the market, the Industry was concerned about its execution and short deadlines. “The order needs to be implemented without causing much disruption in current business or diluting its purpose,” the release stated.

Since the announcement of this Order in October 2012, the government has been sending notifications and clarification from time to time and last of such clarification was issued as late as the second week of March 2013, creating absolute confusion in the Industry.  Besides, the country does not have sufficient number of labs to test these products with the fifth (5th) such facility being notified by the government as late as the 3rd week of February 2013.

Commenting on this, Anwar Shirpurwala, Executive Director, MAIT said, “We welcome this order from the government and the companies are ready to comply with these standards and tests but there are concerns in achieving the deadline. There are only six labs available for these tests and they take time in testing the products. After testing, BIS takes time for certifying, and then labeling of the products needs to be done. Only after labeling, the products can be manufactured and placed in the market. If the deadline is not extended, the IT hardware supply will get affected resulting in the price hike of these 15 categories of products. Therefore, we request the government to extend the deadline by a minimum 6 months.”

Around 8,000 products are to be tested from an average five factories each and these labs take around 4 to 6 weeks to test one product. On the basis of the current testing capacity, which is 500 products in a month, the time required to get certificates for each product is fairly long and the deadline of 3 April 2013 set by the government is completely unrealistic. Besides, neither the government nor the private labs are able to commit specific duration to test these products. In view of these circumstances, the Industry feels there is a need to extend the deadline, MAIT said.