Rajya Sabha Discussed Safety Standards Practices in Toys Manufacturing

The Union Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Shri Ashwini Kumar Choubey in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha that, the Safety of Toys is under compulsory Bureau of Indian Standard (BIS) certification from 1^st Jan. 2021 as per the Toys (Quality Control) Order, 2020 issued by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade) under Section 16 of the BIS Act, 2016.

Accordingly, as per this Order, it has been made compulsory for toys to conform to the corresponding Indian Standards for Safety of Toys and to bear Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) Standard Mark under a licence from BIS as per Scheme-I of Schedule-II of BIS (Conformity Assessment) Regulations, 2018.

As per this Quality Control Order, read with Section 17 of the BIS Act, 2016, no person shall manufacture, import, distribute, sell, hire, lease, store or exhibit for sale any toys without the ISI mark.

Under the BIS Product Certification scheme i.e. Scheme-I of Schedule-II of the BIS (Conformity Assessment) Regulations, 2018, Licence is granted to manufacturing units to use the Standard Mark on the product as per the relevant Indian Standards.  Accordingly, toy manufacturing units including foreign manufacturing units exporting toys to India are required to obtain BIS licence for safety of toys.

Under BIS Foreign Manufacturers certification scheme, 29 licences have been granted to foreign toy manufacturing units in the following countries (See table 1).

3 licences have been granted in 2021-22 and the remaining 26 in 2022-23.  No licence has been granted to any unit in China.

                         Table 1: List of foreign licences granted for toy

Quality Control Order for Toys came into effect on 01.01.2021, after which Search and Seizures were conducted by BIS. No information regarding fake/imported Toys was available till such time.  During the search and seizure operations conducted by BIS, a quantity of 9565 and 30229 was seized during the year 2021-22 and 2022-23 (upto 25^th January, 2023 respectively.

 Total no. of 40 and 60 Search and Seizure operations during 2021-22 and 2022-23 respectively have been carried for Violation of Quality Control Order (QCO) for toys.