The Delhi Branch of the National Standards Body of India, the Bureau of Indian Standards, conducted a search and seizure operation at the warehouses of Amazon Sellers Pvt Ltd, located in Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area, Delhi.
The operation lasted over 15 hours, and more than 3,500 products, both without an ISI mark and marked with fake ISI labels, were seized. The total estimated value of the seized products like geysers, food mixers and other electrical appliances is around Rs. 70 lakhs.
In another raid conducted at Instakart Services Pvt Limited, a Flipkart subsidiary located in Trinagar, Delhi, unearthed a stock of sports footwear packaged for dispatch without the necessary ISI mark and date of manufacture. Approximately 590 pairs of sports footwear, worth around Rs. 6 lakhs, were seized during this operation.
In the last one month, the BIS team has conducted similar operations in different parts of the country and seized various substandard items in Delhi, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Lucknow, and Sriperumbudur.
These raids are part of the Bureau of Indian Standards’ ongoing efforts to enforce compliance with quality standards for consumer protection.
Currently there are 769 products notified for compulsory certification by various regulators, and line Ministries of the Govt of India. It is prohibited to manufacture, import, distribute, sell, hire, lease, store, or exhibit (for sale) these products without a valid license or Certificate of Compliance (CoC) from BIS.
Any person who contravenes the provisions of this Order shall be punishable under sub-section (3) of section 29 of the BIS Act, 2016, with imprisonment, a fine, or both.
Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is the National Standard Body of India. BIS is responsible for the harmonious development of the activities of standardization, marking and quality certification of goods and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.
BIS through its core activities of standardization and conformity assessment, has been benefiting the national economy by providing safe, reliable and quality goods; minimizing health hazards to consumers; protecting the environment, promoting exports and imports substitute; controlling over proliferation of varieties etc. The standards and certification scheme of BIS apart from benefitting the consumers and industry also support various public policies especially in areas of product safety, consumer protection, food safety, environment protection, building and construction, etc.
In recent years, BIS has worked towards specifically addressing various national priorities and other government initiatives like Swachch Bharat Abhiyan, Digital India, Make in India and ease of doing business through its activities of standardization and certification.
In standards development, BIS continues to address issues of technology changes and advancements, climate change, environment and energy conservation, conditions of health and safety and facilitation of trade. In the area of conformity assessment BIS is working towards making the processes simpler and faster.
Objectives of BIS are:
- Harmonious development of the activities of standardization, marking and quality certification of goods
- To provide thrust to standardization and quality control for growth and development of industry on one hand and to meet the needs of consumers on the other.
As per its organizational network, BIS has its Headquarters at New Delhi. It has 5 Regional Offices (ROs) located at Kolkata (Eastern), Chennai (Southern), Mumbai (Western), Chandigarh (Northern) and Delhi (Central). Under the Regional Offices are the Branch Offices (BOs).
There are 33 BOs located at 28 different locations namely Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Bhopal, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Dehradun, Delhi, Durgapur, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Jammu, Jamshedpur, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, Parwanoo, Patna, Pune, Raipur, Rajkot and Vishakhapatnam. The BOs serve as an effective link between State Governments, industries, technical institutions, consumer organizations, etc., of the region.
In fact, there is a great present-day trend of purchasing things in all its forms and kinds online. Many a time, receivers get substandard things. BIS is a great formation to help out such customers also along with the regular ones.
The activities of BIS can be broadly grouped under the heads as:
- Standards formulation
- International activities
- Product Certification
- Hallmarking
- Laboratory services
- Training services – National Institute of Training for Standardisation
- Consumer Affairs and Publicity
Standards Formulation: BIS formulates Indian Standards in line with the national priorities for various sectors that have been grouped under 14 Departments like Chemicals, Food and Agriculture, Civil, Electro-technical, Electronics & Information Technology, Mechanical Engineering, Management & Systems, Metallurgical Engineering, Petroleum Coal & Related Products, Medical Equipment and Hospital Planning, Textile, Transport Engineering, Production & General Engineering and Water Resources. Corresponding to these Departments fourteen Division Councils exist. Each Division Council has a number of Sectional committees working under it. The standards cover important segments of economy and help the industry in upgrading the quality of their goods and services.
International Activities: International Organization for Standardization (ISO)- ISO is an independent, non-governmental membership organization and the world’s largest developer of voluntary International Standards. BIS is a founder member of ISO and is actively involved in development of International Standards by acting as Participating (P) member or Observer (O) member on various Technical Committees, Sub-Committees, Working Groups, etc.
Hallmarking of Gold Jewlery was started by BIS in April 2000 to provide third party assurance to consumers on the purity of gold jewelry or its fineness. The scheme for Hallmarking of Silver Jewlery / artefacts was launched in October 2005. Under the hallmarking scheme, the jewelers are granted certificate of registration to sell hallmarked jewelry and Assaying & Hallmarking (A&H) centers are recognized to assay the purity of the jewelers submitted by the registered jeweler along with declaration of purity and apply hallmark on such jewelry which is found conforming to relevant Indian Standard including declared fineness.
BIS operates a Product Certification scheme for ensuring compliance to Indian Standards. Presence of BIS standard mark (popularly known as ISI mark) on a product indicates conformity to the relevant Indian Standard. Before granting license to any manufacturer, BIS ascertains the availability of required infrastructure and capability of the manufacturer to produce and test the product conforming to the relevant Indian Standard on a continuous basis.
The BIS certification scheme is voluntary in nature. However, for a number of products, compliance to Indian Standards made mandatory by the Central Government under various statutes in public interest.
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