PRESIDENTIAL
ADDRESS BY PROF. K. V. THOMAS, HON’BLE MINISTER OF STATE (INDEPENDENT CHARGE)
OF CONSUMER AFFAIRS, FOOD & PUBLIC DISTRIBUTION, GOVT. OF INDIA AND
PRESIDENT OF THE BUREAU AT THE 21ST BUREAU MEETING ON THURSDAY, THE
24TH JANUARY, 2013 at Kochi:
Hon’ble Members of the Bureau of Indian Standards, Shri Pankaj Agrawala, Secretary, Department of
Consumer Affairs, Shri Afzal Amamullah, Additional
Secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs and Director General, Bureau of Indian Standards, ladies and gentlemen:
2. I am
happy to be here amidst all of you to preside over the twenty first meeting of
the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). At the outset, I would like to take the
opportunity to congratulate all of you on the BIS having completed 25 years of
its existence on 1 April 2012. We are in
the silver jubilee year of the Bureau now.
On this occasion, I would like to reiterate the objectives of BIS which
are harmonious development of the activities of standardization, marking and
quality certification of goods and related matters. While BIS has achieved
significantly in respect of these objectives, there is always a scope to excel,
keeping pace with the latest technological advancements.
3. No
doubt, standards provide a framework for an orderly development of the
industry, quality production and competitive efficiency; but our actual success
lies in adoption of these standards by the industry. With only 90 Indian
Standards having been made mandatory by the Government out of 18,800 formulated
by the BIS, a lot depends on the voluntary adoption of BIS standards by the
industry if it were to walk with confidence of its quality of products. I would expect that the industry would be
willing and forthcoming without reservations in adopting these standards, as
they are not only in their interest but in the interest of the potential of
Indian industry as a whole.
4. Another
important aspect concerns the need for development of standards in areas such
as health, safety, environment protection and energy conservation with
clearly-defined national priorities. In
the area of public health and safety, the BIS has given adequate attention to
formulate food safety standards to ensure availability of safe and hygienic
food to consumers. Here, the Indian Standards on Good Manufacturing
Practices (GMP), Good Hygiene Practices (GHP) and on Food Retail Management
have been formulated. Another standard on `Street Food Vendors,’ lays down
check points on quality control, with minimum requirements, ensuring safety
aspects of street food. It has also been
published recently which was released by Hon’ble President of India
during a national seminar on Food Safety – Role of Standards organized by the BIS at Vigyan
Bhawan, New Delhi in December 2012. It
has been a matter of satisfaction for us that the Hon’ble President had, during the
seminar, highlighted the important role to be played by Bureau of Indian
Standards in meeting the challenge of ensuring food safety.
5. In
addition to setting up standards, the BIS has also been operating
‘certification schemes’ for products as well as management systems to provide quality products and services to the
consumers.
Since the last meeting of the BIS, 7 Steel Products, which include
specific varieties of steel plates and bars, have been brought under mandatory
certification to protect the consumers from being supplied with products of
irregular quality with which the number of products being covered under
mandatory certification will get raised to 90.
6. Another
effort of the BIS has been to facilitate the growth of emerging technologies
such as information technology, bio-technology, nano-technology, etc. To protect consumers from spurious and
sub-standard imports in these areas of technology, a Scheme for
Self-declaration of Conformity has been introduced by the BIS in the form of
“Registration” by an amendment to BIS Rules, 1987. This will provide an
alternate conformity assessment option to the existing provisions through
Registration Scheme. I am told that the
Department of Electronics and Information Technology has issued necessary order
in this regard, and the BIS has geared up its mechanism to meet the challenges,
and that laboratories have already been recognized by the BIS for testing of
these electronic and IT goods.
7. The BIS has been playing an
active role in international events and I am happy to inform that BIS, after
a span of 47 years, had once again hosted the General Assembly of the ISO at
New Delhi, India in September 2011, which was a great success. 368 delegates from 127 countries and
international organizations participated in the General Assembly, which came in
for special praise, and, as a token of its appreciation, the ISO had also
passed a special resolution praising the efforts of the BIS in this regard.
8. I feel happy to inform that during the year
BIS will be hosting the 77th IEC General Meeting from 21-25 October
2013 in New Delhi. It is expected that representatives from a large number of
Member Countries of IEC will participate in the meetings. Hosting the meeting in India will provide us
a forum to voice our concerns and views on matters of standardization in the
electro-technical sector.
9. On the
whole, it has been a happy journey for the BIS since the last meeting with new
achievements. I hope that the BIS will
continue to strive to achieve its objective of safeguarding the customers’
needs for goods and services of good quality.
10. In
conclusion, I extend my personal welcome to the Members of the Bureau and
invite them to actively participate in the deliberations of Twentieth meeting
of the Bureau.
THANK YOU!
