BIS, has brought in some fresh standards for certain home appliances. The BIS in a statement said that these items will have to follow the norms set by the bureau. These include refrigerators with or without low temperature, freezers and household frosts. BIS standards that help to ensure quality certification of goods and incidental matters, have been made applicable to refrigerators and freezers from Jan 2020 and as such the industry players dealing in these goods will have to mandatorily comply with the standards issued by BIS and also obtain requisite BIS registrations.”

BIS is in the process of setting standards for services provided by e-commerce companies and aggregators like Flipkart, Ola, AirBnB among others. BIS, has been in discussion with various stakeholders to lay out standards for several issues ranging from standardisation of invoices and websites. It also plans to come out with certification for secure websites in order to curb the menace of fly by night operators in the digital commerce industry. The certification will help consumers in identifying the reliable ones," said an official who did not want to be identified.

DPIIT India which is also responsible for formulation and implementation of IPR policies has recently published its annual report for the year 2019/2020. Chapter 5 of the annual report provides description of recent activities of the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks (CGPDTM) carried out in 2019/2020 including:

• implementation of new amendments in Patent Rules

• number of patents granted under the expedited examination procedure

• number of applications received by CGPDTM in the capacity of ISA and IPEA 

Govt., in exercise of the powers conferred upon it under Section 159 of the Patents Act, 1970 has passed the Patents (Amendment) Rules of 2020 (“The Rules”) on October 19, 2020. The Rules modify Form 27 of the Act through which statements regarding the working of patented invention on a commercial scale in India have to be filed by Patentees or Licensees. According to the amendment to Rule 131(2), the statement regarding the workings of the Patent have to be filed once in every financial year, within six months from the expiry of such financial year, due to which the due date for filing the same would be September 31st of every financial year.

The International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIITH) has set up a Smart City Research Center (SCRC) with support from MEITY (Government of India), Smart City Mission and Government of Telangana. As a part of it, Living Lab plans to create an urban area enhancing three value domains: social, economic, and environmental. It includes Living Lab, a test-bed to showcase new ideas and approaches in IoT.  IIITH existing centres will be lending their expertise to the Smart City Research Centre in various domains covering signal processing, OneM2M server, design of smart and automated buildings, optics and photonics, flexible electronics, embedded systems and IoT, radio frequency integrated circuit design and low-power VLSI design, research and development in fundamental aspects of computing systems etc.

As India strives to deliver over 100 smart cities across the country, standards-based deployment would help promote interoperability, security and multi-vendor deployments. International standards initiative for M2M and IoT technologies oneM2M has announced that its standard has been adopted at national level in India to develop the 100 smart cities plan of the country. oneM2M standard has been transposed in India by TSDSI.

Should India achieve its 2030 electric vehicle ambition and targets, it would present a market opportunity worth nearly $206 billion in the course of this decade, says an independent study released by the CEEW Centre for Energy Finance (CEEW-CEF). The study also estimates a cumulative investment need of over $180 billion in vehicle production and charging infrastructure until 2030 to meet India’s EV ambition. While India is yet to officially spell out its electrification targets for 2030, the aspiration as stipulated by NITI Aayog-government’s primary think tank, states that 70% of all commercial cars, 30% of private cars, 40 % of buses, and 80% of two-wheeler (2W) and three-wheeler (3W) sales would be electric by the end of this new decade. 

India plans to offer $4.6 billion in incentives to companies setting up advanced battery manufacturing facilities as it seeks to promote the use of electric vehicles and cut down its dependence on oil, according to a government proposal seen by Reuters. A proposal drafted by NITI Aayog, a federal think tank chaired by Prime Minister, said India could slash its oil import bills by as much as $40 billion by 2030 if electric vehicles were widely adopted.  

Department of heavy industries extended the deadline for the localisation of several components under its phased manufacturing programme (PMP) for electric vehicles (EV) from October 1 to April 1 2021, offering a breather to the industry. Compliance with the PMP is a condition for availing subsidies. The move is expected to help the fledgling EV industry as the localisation plans of several companies were derailed due to the disruption from the pandemic.