29 licences granted to foreign toy manufacturing units, none to Chinese

Under the Bureau of Indian standards (BIS) Foreign Manufacturers certification scheme, 29 licences have been granted to foreign toy manufacturing units. However, the Centre claimed that no license has been given to any unit from China. 

The Union Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Ashwini Kumar Choubey in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha on Friday said that the Safety of Toys is under compulsory Bureau of Indian Standard (BIS) certification from January 1, 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 the 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. Three licences have been granted in 2021-22 and the remaining 26 in 2022-23. No licence has been granted to any unit in China," said the reply by the Minister.

The reply said that a maximum 16 licences have been granted to Vietnam in this regard.

"Quality Control Order for Toys came into effect on January 1, 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 9,565 and 30,229 was seized during the year 2021-22 and 2022-23 (up to January 25, 2023 respectively.

"Total number of 40 and 60 search and seizure operations during 2021-22 and 2022-23 respectively have been carried out for Violation of Quality Control Order (QCO) for toys," the Centre mentioned in the reply.