MeitY's Krishnan pushes sovereign autonomy and screen-protector BIS rules

NEW DELHI: MeitY Secretary S Krishnan spent 24 September 2026 arguing that India should stay open to global technology while building enough domestic muscle to survive denial or disruption. On the same day he also defended a fresh quality gate for smartphone screen protectors, a consumer product that now sits inside the compulsory BIS registration schedule.

Speaking at a Public Affairs Forum of India event in the capital, Krishnan framed the goal as sovereign autonomy rather than total self-sufficiency. India, he said, cannot make every component across every value chain. It should instead hold a large enough role in strategic segments that partners cannot casually cut it out.

Mutually assured disruption, not isolation

Krishnan described a posture he called mutually assured disruption: build domestic capability so that technology denial hurts the denier as well. Semiconductor presence featured in his remarks as a strategic priority because India is becoming a heavier electronics consumer as incomes rise.

He linked the shift to post-pandemic supply-chain thinking. Firms and governments, he said, now weigh diversification more heavily than parking every factory in the single cheapest location. Legacy semiconductor nodes were held up as a practical entry point given fiscal capacity and current manufacturing depth, with research programmes expected to stretch toward harder nodes later.

On the sidelines of the India 3.0: The Next Tech Leap gathering, Krishnan said global electronics and chip firms were moving from fear-of-missing-out visits toward concrete investment conversations. That tone matters for factories still deciding package sizes and tool orders.

Screen protectors under BIS from April 2027

The consumer-facing edge of the same week is glass on phones. Notification S.O. 5190(E), dated 21 September 2026, adds "Screen Protectors for smartphones" as Schedule item 66 under the Electronics and Information Technology Goods (Requirement of Compulsory Registration) Order, 2021. The Indian Standard cited is IS 19348:2025, Glass Screen Protector - Specification. Compliance applies from 1 April 2027.

Krishnan said India already has enough domestic production capacity in the category and needs to keep substandard imports from undercutting quality local output. The gazette text itself is narrower: it sets the standard and the start date, leaving manufacturers a transition window through 31 March 2027.

For retailers and importers, April 2027 is the hard stop. For policy watchers, Krishnan's two tracks - value-chain indispensability and a mundane accessory standard - show MeitY working both the strategic speech circuit and the schedule of goods that actually hits customs.

Putting screen protectors on the compulsory list looks small beside fabs and AI missions, yet it is the kind of schedule change customs officers and marketplace sellers actually implement. IS 19348:2025 gives labs a test target; April 2027 gives factories a calendar.

Krishnan's broader warning against dumping sits next to that date. Domestic capacity without a quality floor invites a race to the bottom on scratched glass and weak adhesives. The gazette does not set retail MRP caps; it sets conformity.

Read together, the PAFI speech and the screen-protector order show MeitY talking industrial strategy in the morning and editing the goods schedule in the same news cycle. One is aspiration. The other has a serial number in the Gazette of India.