The Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council (ESC) has expressed its deep concern on the violent incident taken place at Wistron’s Narasapura facility in Karnataka.

It said that a quick consultative process should be initiated to resolve the issue since the production model followed by Apple — sub-contracting production to carefully selected ancillary units — has a huge scope in India and a few other electronic giants are proposing to relocate into India using this production model.

“Industrial peace and harmony are critical to keep the production process going and there is nothing that cannot be solved through amicable discussions, involving labor commissioners and other machineries in respective States,” Sandeep Narula, Chairman, ECS, said in a statement on Friday.

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Besides the iPhone, Wistron also manufactures IT products for Lenovo and Microsoft, among others. The Kolar facility of Wistron assembles the latest version of the iPhone SE. The arson and violence caused heavy damages to the company’s plant and machinery and vitiated the working atmosphere.

Wistron has received approval for incentives under the government’s production-linked incentive plan, which is reflective of the importance assigned by the government for popularising such business models to usher in a new regime in the electronics sector for upping India’s production capacities for reducing imports and making forays into exports, he said.

“Because of the proactive policies, India of late has become an exporter of mobile phones from a heavy importer,” Narula added.

The government has also taken note of the incident at the Wistron factory premises recently. The DPIIT Secretary has also spoken with the Senior Officers of the Karnataka government on Tuesday.

The DPIIT has advised them to complete the inquiry into the incident at the earliest, identify the culprits, look into the wages and labour related matters there, and also ensure that the investor sentiment is not affected due to such one-off incident.

Meanwhile, Karnataka government in a statement has said: “The Government of Karnataka is deeply disturbed over the events that happened at the Wistron factory premises recently at Narasapura Industrial Area, Kolar. We strongly condemn the violence that took place in the plant premises.​Police investigations are going on and strictest action would be taken against the wrongdoers.”

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