Profile
Settings
Refer your friends
Sign out
The headquarters of Bureau of Indian standards is situated in New Delhi, and other regional offices are located in Chennai (southern), Chandigarh (northern), Kolkata (eastern), and Delhi(central). Working under these regional offices lie Branch offices (BOs). They can be found in the cities of Bhubaneshwar, Parwanoo, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Pune, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Bangalore, Bhopal, Kochi, Jamshedpur, Rajkot, Durgapur, and Visakhapatnam.
These Branch Offices tend to offer services of certification for various industries and hence act as an important link between Governments, consumers, Industries, etc.
Origin of BIS
When Britishers were leaving India in its worst condition, the framers of our constitution realized the fact that the amount of rebuilding and shaping of industries needed to be done. This forced the Departments such as Industries and Supplies to pass a memorandum in the September month of 1946 which announced the establishment of the organization was named ‘Indian Standards Institution’.
In the initial years, the organization has more focus on the activities of standardization. They were more focused on extending the services of standardization to the common consumers. They started to operate on a certification scheme under the act passed in 1952 called the ISI act. This scheme, which was first launched by ISI in mid-decade of 1950 to 1960, empowered it to give licenses to the manufacturers. They also had to apply ISI marks on their products
The Bureau of Indian Standards was established under the act of parliament with a time period of about four months. This act gave more powers and broadened the area of functioning of BIS over the ISI.
The Bureau can be described as the body corporate, which comprises about twenty-five members from the central governments and the state governments, Members from the parliament, professional bodies, and Institutions related to research and development in the required field. This composition was headed by the Consumer affairs minister, who was the president, and vice presidentship was offered to the Consumer affairs minister of state.
Certification of Products
Product certification for Indian Manufacturers should be voluntarily obtained. For products that are directly concerned with the health of the public in a broader perspective, BIS has made certifications compulsory. These could be the Milk powder, gas cylinders or drinking water, etc.
On the other hand, the manufacturers residing in foreign and willing to stretch their growth to Indian markets require a certificate license. Some products require a mandatory BIS certification as wanted by different Indian Ministries. For the sake of this purpose, BIS has launched a scheme that focuses on the product certification for the foreign manufacturers known as the ‘ Foreign Manufacturers certification scheme’. Under this scheme, a foreign manufacturer willing to sell in In India can attain the BIS certification and sell their product with the BIS mark. The foreign Manufacturer needs to appoint an Indian citizen who will act as an agent between the BIS and the foreign manufacturers.
For Indian Importers, those who import goods from the foreign Manufacturer might obtain a license to get the proper certification mark.
Indian Standards Bill, 2015
Passed on March 8th, 2016, in the Rajya Sabha. This new bill passed in 2016 will have to repeal the existing bill of the Bureau of Indian standards, which came into force in 1986. The main bureau of Indian standards features that are portrayed In this bill are;
- Establishment of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) as a regulatory body for looking after the standardizing functions.
- It mentions the presence of a composition of the council. This is looked after by the governing council, which has the president and a few other members, as stated above.
- It also empowers the government to bring in a new certification scheme for various articles, types of services, and processes. This grants consumers the right to gain the ISI certificate and further reduces the chances of importing inferior goods from foreign.
These are the major highlights of the bill. Bill got the assent of the house as well as the president by March 21st of the year, 2016.
Under its regulatory framework lies the National building code of India. It is an organized building code that regulates the construction practices in the whole country. Its first publication came in the year 1970. Now you have got an idea about the bureau of Indian standards features.
Conclusion
The Bureau of Indian Standards gives the manufacturers the licenses and ISI marks for their products. Broadly we can say it provides consumers with the relief that whatever they are consuming, if that thing is verified by the ISI mark, then they need not worry about the authenticity of that product.
