India plans to appeal against the World Trade Organisation ruling on the mandatory domestic content stipulations in its national solar power generation programme. New Delhi proposes to do so in the next few days before the WTO ruling is adopted by the dispute settlement body (DSB).

“The appeal against the ruling has to be filed before it is put up for adoption in the DSB by the US, as it can’t be challenged once adopted. We hope to do it in the next 15 days,” an official from the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) told BusinessLine .

Meanwhile, the Centre does not want to make any changes in the local procurement norms in its ambitious Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) till a ruling on its proposed appeal is made by the WTO panel. This can take up to four months once an appeal is filed.

“We don’t need to do anything at the moment. We will wait for things to take their course,” the official said. The WTO’s dispute settlement panel, on Wednesday, published its verdict on the case filed by the US against India three years ago.

It ruled that the requirement in the JNNSM on local purchase of certain solar cells and modules flouted multilateral trade rules as it discriminated against foreign manufacturers.

India had so far been arguing that since the power generated under JNNSM was bought by an agency of the public sector company NTPC, the transaction qualified as government procurement which was not covered by WTO rules.

This was rejected by the WTO as the local content requirement was on power equipment and not power that is bought by the government.

“India has to decide on a convincing line of argument to take while filing the appeal, which has to be different from what it has been using so far,” a trade expert from a Delhi-based research group said.

Although the WTO panel was ready with its report in August last year, it had not published it as the US and India had sought time to settle the matter bilaterally.

No bilateral solution The US and India were trying to reach a mutual satisfactory solution to the problem that would have entailed amending the sourcing rules to ensure that the local content requirement was imposed only on projects where it could be established that the power produced was used by government entities. “Intense discussions took place between the office of the US Trade Representative and the MNRE over the last few months, but the two sides were not able to settle the details,” the official said.

While the JNNSM aims to add 100,000 MW of solar power by 2022, the local content requirement is only for 8,000 MW for rooftop and land-based projects where the government provides a subsidy.

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