dispute redress machinery at the national, state and district levels aimed at providing simple,
      speedy and affordable redress to consumers.
      Bureau of Indian Standards
           A new Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) Act 2016 came into force from 2017. The Act
      establishes the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) as the national Standards Body of India. It has
      enabling provisions for the Government to bring under compulsory certification regime any
      goods or article of any scheduled industry, process, system or service which it considers
      necessary in the public interest or for the protection of human, animal or plant health, safety of
      the environment, or prevention of unfair trade practices, or national security. Enabling provisions
      have also been made for making hallmarking of the precious metal articles mandatory. The new
      Act also allows multiple type of simplified conformity assessment schemes including self-
      declaration of conformity against a standard which will give simplified options to manufacturers
      to adhere to the standards and get certificate of conformity. The Act enables the Central
      government to appoint any authority/agency, in addition to the BIS, to verify the conformity of
      products and services to a standard and issue certificate of conformity. Further, there is provision
      for repair or recall, including product liability of the products bearing Standard Mark but not
      conforming to the relevant Indian Standard. The new Act will further help in ease of doing
      business in the country, give fillip to “Make In India” campaign and ensure availability of quality
      products and services to the consumers. Bureau of Indian Standards Rules, were also notified in
      2017.
           The Bureau of Indian Standards was set up as a statutory organization taking over the assets
      and liabilities of the Indian Standards Institution (ISI) that came into existence in 1947. The
      Bureau has its headquarters in New Delhi. It has a network of 05 regional offices, 32 branch
      offices and 08 laboratories which act as effective link between BIS, government, industry and
      consumers. The Bureau has made steady progress in the various fields of its key activities
      namely standards formulation, product certification, management system certification and
      hallmarking.
      Relevant Website: www.bis.gov.in
      National Consumer Helpline
           National Consumer Helpline (NCH) is a project that operates under the Centre for
      Consumer Studies at Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA). It was set up in 2004 and
      has customized software which is server based for receiving calls and answering through one
      PRI line. The Project recognizes the need of consumers for a Telephone Helpline to deal with
      multitude of problems arising in their day-to-day dealings with business and service providers.
      Its primary objective is to attend to the telephone calls from consumers and provide information
      to the callers and register their complaints in the INGRAM portal, to provide advice and
      counselling to consumers for redressal of their grievances, handle the complaints received online
      through the INGRAM portal, emails, sms, etc., to assist/guide the consumers in registering their
      complaints in the appropriate consumer fora, to perform backend operations, etc. National
      consumer Helpline(NCH) is the core of the Consumer grievance redressal mechanism. It does
      not work as Call Centre alone. It has partnered with 373 companies that respond online to
      resolve complaints. This is called convergence mechanism. It also pursues the complaints with
      the convergence companies, takes feedback from the complainants, does research and analysis of
      the complaint. NCH provides a National Toll Free No-1800-11-4000. SMS can also be sent to