Day 7 February 1989. A mysterious fire at Semacist Complex Limited in Mohali, Chandigarh destroyed the production line in this plant. The Semiconductor Complex Limited (SCL) was established in 1976 to create indigenous chips. This semiconductor plant started production in 1984 and was constructing 5000 nanometer chips. In terms of technology and performance, these chips were then behind only one generation from other countries of the world.
This legendary tech company Intel is just 13 years later after making the world’s first commercial microprocessor. And in chip manufacturing, the legendary company Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is dominated around the world today, it is three years after its starting production.
Despite being a government project, SCL had wondered. It also included research and development. This institution was working on more advance semiconductor. But the fire of a mystery burnt that dream to ashes.
Officially, due to this fire, it was never known, but there are many theries behind it. Some people believe that it was an accident, while others believe that it was a conspiracy fire. One of the major conclusions of the investigation of this fire was that the fire incident took place in many places in the plant simultaneously, which strengthened the theory of the conspiracy.
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In 1989, there was a loss of Rs 75 crore from this fire. But the country had to pay its real price after decades. In 2024, India imported semiconductor chips worth $ 20 billion (Rs 1.71 lakh crore). The import of the country is increasing by 18% every year because the need for semiconductor is everywhere. Chips provide strength to everything from smartphones to lunar rockets and television to cruise missiles.
It took SCL almost a decade to resume its operation. And when the company finally opened again in 1997, it had lagged behind the rest of the world. In 2000, the government’s efforts to sell a part of SCL’s equity failed due to differences with potential private investors over conditions.
The delay of bureaucracy also played a big role in obstructing progress.
In 2006, the government decided to reorganize the company as a research and development center under the Department of Space and changed its name to “Semiconductor Lab”.
The SCL was subjected to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in early 2023. SCL now produces 180 nanometer chips for defense, space and strategic applications, which are considered highly sensitive for imports. For comparison, understand that TSMC makes 3 nanometer chips and is switching to 2 nenimeters this year.
The desire to create a large scale indigenous chips in India finally in 2022, with the launch of the India Semiconductor Mission with a budget of Rs 76,000 crore.
By August this year, the government had approved 10 projects invested in six states with an investment of Rs 1.60 lakh crore. India does not clearly want to make all its chips in the same plant.
On 15 August 2025, Prime Minister Modi announced that India will produce its first semiconductor chip by the end of 2025. Like the mythological Phoenix bird, India’s chip dream is also going to stand up from the ashes.
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