World Standards Day

Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS)

• It came into existence, through an Act of Parliament in 1987.
• It was established by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) Act 2016 as the National Standards Body of India.
  • It is the only national body that frames standards.
• It works under the aegis of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Government of India.
• It aims for the harmonious development of the activities of standardization and marking and quality certification of goods.
• Major Initiatives:
  • BIS-Care App: It provides a platform to consumers for grievance redressal and feedback through the portal. 
  • Quality Control Orders (QCO): It is formulating the standards of manufactured products.

Important initiatives taken for effective implementation of the BIS Act, 2016

•  The  Central Government has notified “Gold jewellery and gold artefacts” and “Silver jewellery and silver artefacts” to be marked with Hallmark.
• The BIS (Conformity Assessment) Regulations, 2018 has been notified under the Act. The Regulations provide for 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 the standards and get certificate of conformity, thus improving the “ease of doing business”.
• Penal provisions for better and effective compliance and to enable compounding of offences for violations have been made stringent under new regulation.