India's own 5G technology, TSDSI 5Gi, has completed the evaluation phase of ITU's International Mobile Telecommunications 2020 (IMT-2020) vision and now conforms with the stringent performance requirement. This means that India's contribution is now being accepted as the global 5G standard. The Telecom Standards Development Society of India (TSDSI), India’s body for telecom standards, said that global vendors will now need to make handsets and base stations conforming to this standard. The other two technologies that have completed the evaluation phase are 3GPP 5G-SRIT and 3GPP 5G-RIT submitted by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).

India's power ministry has proposed pushing back the deadlines for adoption of new emission norms by coal-fired power plants, saying "an unworkable time schedule" would burden utilities and lead to an increase in power tariffs. India initially had set a 2017 deadline for thermal power plants to comply with emissions standards for installing Flue Gas Desulphurization (FGD) units that cut emissions of toxic sulphur dioxide. That was later changed to varying deadlines for different regions, ending in 2022. 

• Testing of all equipment, components, and parts imported for use in the power Supply System and Network in the country to check for any kind of embedded malware/trojans/cyber threat and for adherence to Indian Standards. Read more/Download>>
• All Electricity Distribution Companies (DISCOMs) to come under Energy Conservation (EC) Act, 2001. Read more/Download>>
• Amendments to the Guidelines for Tariff Based Competitive Bidding Process for Procurement of Round-The Clock Power from Grid Connected Renewable Energy Power Projects, complemented with Power from Coal Based Thermal Power Projects. Read more/Download>>

The govt. has set up a 22-member inter-ministerial committee in strengthening the Capital Goods (CG) Sector through interventions that help the CG Sector in contributing more actively in the national goal of achieving a USD 5 trillion economy and a USD 1 trillion manufacturing sector. The IMC will help DHI in taking a holistic view for all the issues pertaining to the CG Sector. The Committee will look into on all such issues pertaining to the Capital Goods Sector including technology development, mother technology development, global value chains, testing, skill training, global standards, reciprocity issues, custom duties to make this sector globally competitive and to become the manufacturing hub for the world.

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.

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.