Courtesy: ISI product certification scheme
Indian Standards Bill, 2015
The Bill was passed on 8 March 2016 by the Rajya Sabha. The new Bill will repeal the existing Bureau of Indian Standards Act, 1986. The main objectives of the proposed legislation are:
- To establish the Bureau of Indian standards (BIS) as the National Standards Body of India.
- The Bureau to perform its functions through a governing council, which will consist of President and other members.
- To include goods, services and systems, besides articles and processes under the standardization regime.
- To enable the government to bring under the mandatory certification regime for such articles, processes or service which it considers necessary from the point of view of health, safety, environment, prevention of deceptive practices, consumer security etc. This will help consumers receive ISI certified products and will also help in prevention of import of sub-standard products.
- To allow multiple types of simplified conformity assessment schemes including self-declaration of conformity (SDOC) against any standard which will give multiple simplified options to manufacturers to adhere to standards and get a certificate of conformity, thus improving the ‘ease of doing business’.
- To enable the Government to implement mandatory hallmarking of precious metals articles.
- To strengthen penal provisions for better effective compliance and enable compounding of offences for violations.
- To provide recall, including product liability of products bearing the Standard Mark, but not conforming to relevant Indian Standards.
- Repeal of the BIS Act of 1986.
- The Bureau of Indian Standards Act 2016 received the assent of the President on 21 March 2016.
Organisation
National Institute of Training for Standardization (NITS)
It is a training institute of BIS which is set up in 1995. It is functioning from Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India.
The primary activities of NITS are:
- In-House and Open Training Programme for Industry
- International Training Programme for Developing Countries (Commonwealth countries)
- Training Programme to its employees.
Cells
Laboratories
To support the activities of product certification, BIS has a chain of 8 laboratories. These laboratories have established testing facilities for products of chemical, food, electrical and mechanical disciplines. Approximately, 25000 samples are being tested in the BIS laboratories every year. In certain cases where it is economically not feasible to develop test facilities in BIS laboratories and also for other reasons like overloading of samples, equipment being out of order, the services of outside approved laboratories are also being availed. Except for the two labs, all the other labs are NABL (National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories) accredited. It operates a laboratory recognition scheme also.
Small Scale Industry Facilitation Cell
SSI Facilitation Cell became operational since 26 May 1997. The aim of the Cell is to assist the small scale entrepreneurs who are backbone of the Indian industry. It has an incentive scheme to promote such units to get certified with ISI Mark.
Grievance Cell
If any customer reports about the degraded quality of any certified product at Grievance Cell, BIS HQs, BIS gives redressal to the customer.
Collaboration with international standards bodies
BIS is a founder member of International Organization for Standardization (ISO). It represents India in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and the World Standards Service Network (WSSN).
Activities
Standard formulation and promotion
One of the major functions of the Bureau is the formulation, recognition and promotion of the Indian Standards. As on 1 January 2019, over 20,000 Standards have been formulated by BIS, are in force. These cover important segments of economy, which help the industry in upgrading the quality of their products and services.
BIS has identified 15 sectors which are important to Indian Industry. For formulation of Indian Standard, it has separate Division Council to oversee and supervise the work. The Standards are regularly reviewed and formulated in line with the technological development to maintain harmony with the International Standards