The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is the National Standards Body of India under Department of Consumer affairs, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution,

Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...

. It is established by the Bureau of Indian Standards Act, 2016 which came into effect on 12 October 2017. The Minister in charge of the Ministry or Department having administrative control of the BIS is the ex-officio President of the BIS. BIS has 500 plus scientific officers working as Certification Officers, Member secretaries of technical committees and lab OIC's. The organisation was formerly the Indian Standards Institution (ISI), set up under the Resolution of the Department of Industries and Supplies No. 1 Std.(4)/45, dated 3 September 1946. The ISI was registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860. A new Bureau of Indian standards (BIS) Act 2016 which was notified on 22 March 2016, has been brought into force with effect from 12 October 2017. The Act establishes the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) as the National Standards Body of India. As a National Standards Body, it has 25 members drawn from Central or State Governments, industry, scientific and research institutions, and consumer organisations. Its headquarters are in

New Delhi New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament Ho ...

, with regional offices in Eastern Region at

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

, southern Region at

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

, Western Region at

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' fin ...

, Northern Region at

Chandigarh Chandigarh () is a planned city in India. Chandigarh is bordered by the state of Punjab to the west and the south, and by the state of Haryana to the east. It constitutes the bulk of the Chandigarh Capital Region or Greater Chandigarh, which a ...

and Central Region at

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders ...

and 20 branch offices. It also works as WTO-TBT enquiry point for India.

Regulatory framework

National Building Code of India, 2005

It is a comprehensive building code for regulating the building construction activities across the country which was first published in 1970. Preliminary Draft Amendment No. 1 to NBC 2005 Part 11 "Approach to Sustainability" was put into circulation a preliminary draft amendment and BIS accepted the feedback from people till 15 March 2013.

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 Noida, short for New Okhla Industrial Development Authority, is a planned city located in Gautam Buddha Nagar district of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Noida is a satellite city of Delhi and is a part of the National Capital Region (NCR) o ...

Uttar Pradesh Uttar Pradesh (; , 'Northern Province') is a state in northern India. With over 200 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world. It was established in 1950 ...

, India. The primary activities of NITS are: * In-House and Open Training Programme for Industry * International Training Programme for Developing Countries (

Commonwealth countries The Commonwealth of Nations is a voluntary association of 56 sovereign states. Most of them were British colonies or dependencies of those colonies. No one government in the Commonwealth exercises power over the others, as is the case in a p ...

) * 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 The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in Art ...

(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.

Product Certification

For Indian manufacturers

Product Certifications are to be obtained voluntarily. For, some of the products like Milk powder, Drinking Water, LPG Cylinders, etc., certification is mandatory. Because these products are concerned with health and safety.

For foreign manufacturers

Foreign manufacturers of products who intend to export to India also may obtain a BIS product certification license. For some products various Indian government ministries/departments/agencies makes its compulsory to have BIS certification. Towards this, BIS launched its Product Certification Scheme for overseas manufacturers in the year 2000, which is calle
Foreign Manufacturers Certification Scheme
Under the provisions of this scheme, foreign manufacturers can seek certification from BIS for marking their product(s) with BIS Standard Mark. The foreign manufacturer needs to appoint an Authorized Indian Representative who will be an Indian Resident to act as an agent between BIS and the manufacturer. Depending on the product, the manufacturer has to imprint one of two possible marks on the product label. The Standard Mark or the ISI Mark. The Standard Mark is compulsory for certain types of electronics and IT goods, whereas the ISI mark is mandatory for product categories such as cement, household electrical products, food products, steel materials, etc. The ISI mark is also used for several voluntary BIS certification product categories. Bureau of Indian Standard (BIS) is mandatory for all the electronics products listed under th
Compulsory Registration Scheme
(CRS) governed by the government of India and sold in India. Electronics and Information Technology Goods (Requirement for Compulsory Registration) Order, 2012 notified by the MeitY (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology) on 3rd October 2012 stated 15 electronic product categories. On 13th November 2014, MeitY added another 13 electronic products and on 23rd August 2017, 13 other electronic product categories were added by MeitY under this order.

For Indian importers

Indian importers who intend to get Certification Mark may apply for the license. However, the assessment visit is paid to the original product manufacturer.

Management System Certification

* Quality Management System Certification Scheme IS/ISO 9001 * Environmental Management System Certification Scheme IS/ISO 14001 * Occupational Health and Safety Management System Certification Scheme IS 18001 * Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Scheme IS 15000 * Food Safety Management System Certification IS/ISO 22000 * Service Quality Management System Certification Scheme IS 15700 * Energy Management System Certification Scheme IS/ISO 50001 * Medical Devices Management System Certification Scheme IS/ISO 13485 * Social Accountability Management System Certification Scheme IS 16001 * Integrated Management System Certification Scheme * Road Traffic Safety Management System Certification Scheme IS/ISO 39001 * Ready Mixed Concrete Certification Scheme * Integrated Milk Certification Scheme * Adventure Tourism Safety Management System Certification Scheme IS/ISO 21101 * Food Safety Auditing as per Food Safety and Standards (Food Safety Audit) Regulations, 2018

References

External links

*
Indian Standard Codes for Civil Engineering

IS codes for brickwork

IS codes for concrete work

IS codes for soil and Foundation engineering

IS codes for Measurements

done by Public.Resource.Org {{Authority control Indian Standards, Bureau of Government agencies of India 1986 establishments in India Government agencies established in 1986 Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution