The Hindu : Harsher punishment for misuse of ISI mark

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Aug 17, 2003

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Harsher punishment for misuse of ISI mark

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI Aug. 16. To safeguard the sanctity of the ISI mark, the Union Food Ministry has decided to make punishment for misuse of the quality mark more stringent, by raising the period of imprisonment from one to three years and the fine amount from Rs.50,000 to Rs. 1 lakh.

The new measure comes in the wake of nation-wide raids conducted by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) recently, which revealed that the misuse of the ISI mark was widespread. Several manufacturers, even in cities such as Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore that had a strong presence of inspection staff, were found to be using ISI marks on their products without authorisation.

According to Food Ministry officials, a high-level meeting convened here on Monday (August 18) is expected to take a decision on a proposal to provide for a more frequent review of the standards laid down by the BIS for different products. At present, the standards are reviewed only once in five years.

For several years now, experts in the area of standards have been seeking more frequent reviews, arguing that technological growth in all the fields is much faster now. It remained on the backburner until the issue came into sharp focus recently following the report of a Delhi-based NGO that residues of pesticides were present in significant quantities in several brands of drinking water.

The expose highlighted the fact that manufacturers were being allowed to sell their products, though they contained significant levels of pesticides, merely because the technique prescribed for testing samples under the prevailing standards was not sensitive enough.

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