Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Ram Vilas Paswan today chaired a meeting on the Standard formation process of Bureau of India Standard (BIS) and their enforcement with the senior officials from 14 Ministries. Wide ranging discussions were held on how standards are set and what can be done to make their implementation/enforcement better. Shri Paswan exhorted that similar to “One Nation One Constitution” and “One Nation One Ration Card” there should be “One Nation One Standard”.Addressing the media after the meeting, Shri Paswan stated that the meeting was held with all stakeholders, Regulators and officials to review the ‘Process of Making Standards’ and also deliberate on improving the implementation and enforcement of the set Standards. Shri Paswan urged all stakeholders to provide all their suggestions in this regard by 17th September, 2019. Shri Paswan also said that the purpose of setting standards and enforcing them is not intended to bring back ‘’inspector raj’’ but to ensure that quality products are made available for all consumers across the country.
Shri Paswan asserted that Indian Standards should be set as per global benchmarks and just like other countries enforce their standards on imported products. Similarly, foreign goods coming into India should also comply with Indian standards. He said that this should be done on a reciprocal basis for International goods and a system should be put in place for effective monitoring and checking to ensure that they are effectively enforced.Secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs, Shri Avinash K Srivastava expressed happiness at the fact that the time taken to complete the process of Standards formation has been reduced from 24 months earlier to 18 months now. He said that detailed discussions were held on “One Nation One Standard” and for that it is important that BIS is empowered. Shri Srivastava also said that since the BIS is a National Standards body, residuary powers are vested with BIS, all other standard making bodies must work in coordination with BIS.Dr. D K Paul, Member, NITI Aayog informed the media that NITI Aayog is currently working on a draft Medical Devices Bill which will help to tackle the problem of non-standard medical devices coming into the market. It was stated that devices of 23 categories are regulated and notified under drugs and the attempt is to do this on a comprehensive scale.The gathering was also informed that the standard set for Bullet Proof Jackets in India is higher than global benchmarks and India is only the 4th country in the world to have such a standard after USA, Germany and UK. He said that the standard has been set after due consultations with stakeholders and it is now being exported to several countries under the ‘’Make in India’’ initiative.