Make LED standards mandatory, Philips tells Indian government

Philips urged the Indian government to make LED standards mandatory for all government schemes for LED lighting. Speaking at the launch of Philips Hue LED bulbs in India, Philips South Asia CEO Harsh Citale said that the Indian government should make manufacturing standards for LED lights mandatory for Prakash Path Yojana (PPY) initiative in India. Indian government is set to roll out a nationwide LED streetlight upgrade project in 100 cities by March 2016. Philips has an active role in Prakash Path Program and is one of the large suppliers in the project. “LED lighting products that do not meet the Indian lighting standards could give the energy efficiency program a notorious reputation, “…we are working as an industry with the government to say, please don’t just make standards, make them mandatory,” Citale said. He reminded the industry about the “failure” of the former CFL scheme in the country. A lot of CFL products flooded the market due to the implementation of a government scheme. But due to poor quality of the products, the program was halted two years later. “Like in CFL when standards were made mandatory low quality imports stopped. We believe same will happen here, when they are made mandatory, those who have not designed products for India will not be able to comply and low quality imports will stop,” he said. “In fact one of the largest procurement that government has done for Prakash Path… 15 million LED lights was done from us,” said Citale.