The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is the national Standards Body of India working under the aegis of Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, Government of India. It is established by the Bureau of Indian Standards Act, 1986 which came into effect on 23 December 1986. The Minister in charge of the Ministry or Department having administrative control of the BIS is the ex-officio President of the BIS.
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 corporate 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, with regional offices in Eastern Region at Kolkata, southern Region at Chennai, Western Region at Mumbai, Northern Region at Chandigarh and Central Region at Delhi 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 Central Government to appoint any authority in addition to the Bureau of Indian Standards, to verify the conformity of products and services to a standard and issue certificate of conformity.
- 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
