The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has granted 29 licenses to foreign toy manufacturing units, Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Ashwini Kumar Choubey said in a written reply in Rajya Sabha on Friday. He added that while three licenses have been granted in 2021-22, the remaining 26 licenses were granted in 2022-23.
“No licence has been granted to any unit in China,” Choubey said. As per the data shared, the toy manufacturing units who have got BIS licenses are located in Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Hungary and Czech Republic. These include units of key brands such as Mattel and Lego.
Toys come under the ambit of compulsory BIS certification 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,” the Minister added.
As per this Quality Control Order, no person can manufacture, import, distribute, sell, hire, lease, store or exhibit for sale any toys without the ISI mark.
Under the BIS Product Certification scheme, licenses are granted to manufacturing units to use the Standard Mark. Toy manufacturing units including foreign manufacturing units exporting toys to India are required to obtain BIS licence for safety of toys, as per the Ministry.
Quality Control Order for Toys came into effect on January 1, 2021, after which Search and Seizures were conducted by BIS, the Ministry added. “During the search and seizure operations conducted by BIS, 9565 and 30229 toys wers seized during the year 2021-22 and 2022-23 (up to January 23) respectively,” the Ministry added.
About 40 search and seizure operations were undertaken during 2021-22 and about 60 such operations were undertaken in 2022-23 for Violation of Quality Control Order (QCO) for toys, the official statement added.