COIMBATORE: Officials of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) Coimbatore branch office conducted a search and seizure operation at the warehouse facility of Amazon, an e-commerce website, at Coimbatore on Tuesday and seized over 4,453 non-compliant consumer products.
A press release from BIS Coimbatore stated, "A team of officials from the BIS Coimbatore branch office led by Scientist-D/Joint Director Rino John S along with Scientist-D/ Joint Director Remyth Suresh and Scientist-C/Deputy Director Ragu Jyotsna Priya conducted a raid at the Amazon Seller Services Pvt. Ltd., Chettipalayam and seized non-compliant consumer products worth over Rs 95 lakh.
The products included electric toasters, insulated flasks, water bottles, fans, toys, baby diapers, hotpots, water heaters, CCTV cameras and shoes among others. They all lacked the BIS standard marks such as the ISI and registration mark, which violated Section 17 of the BIS Act, 2016, and several quality checks.
Officials informed that consumers should take necessary precautionary measures such as downloading of the BIS care app available on google play store and IOS store, where the products under mandatory BIS certification can be verified and such uncertified products, if received by consumers can be returned to the seller. This in turn will further prevent consumers from buying non-compliant products and support and strengthen the cause of BIS' efforts of consumer protection.
Currently, more than 640 product categories are mandatory under ISI mark scheme and more than 75 electronic goods and IT products are under the registration scheme.
Scientist-G and Head of BIS Coimbatore branch office V Gopinath cautioned that the public should be aware of the seriousness of the offense and any information regarding the genuineness of ISI mark on consumer products such as cookers, LPG stoves, cement, steel, electrical cables and packaged drinking water among others can be verified by feeding the BIS licence number in mobile app and such information may also be sent to the BIS Coimbatore office."