Chennai: The Madras High Court has ordered notice on a petition challenging the constitutionality of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) Act, 2016.
The division bench comprising Justices S Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad, before which the petition filed by Kalyan Jewellers came up for hearing, ordered notice.
Senior advocate Satish Parasaran assisted by advocates Preeti Mohan and Pavitra Venkateswaran, appearing on behalf the Kalyan Jewellers, submitted that the BIS Act 2016, which was notified in October 2017, aims to improve the erstwhile BIS Act of 1986 in ensuring quality standards for precious jewellery and protecting consumer.
The new Act imposes disproportionate and arbitrary penalties on jewellers/licence holders alone, while disregarding basic principles of natural justice and criminal procedure.
Challenging the sections 18, 27(5), 30, and 34 of the BIS Act, and Rules 34 and 49 of the BIS Rules, 2017, they said that section 18 makes licence holders such as Kalyan Jewellers absolutely responsible at all times for goods which carry the standard mark/hallmark.
The provision says that the license holder shall, at all times, remain responsible for conformance of the goods, articles, processes, systems or services carrying the Standard Mark. Elaborating further, the advocates stated that in effect, if the jewellery/good is found to be sub-standard, Kalyan jewellers would be held responsible even if due precaution was taken to verify its quality. And, if the good is found to be sub-standard, section 30 of the Act lays down that every member, employee, stake-holder and associate of the Company would be “deemed to be guilty of the offence” and punished irrespective of their involvement, knowledge, consent or neglect.
The penalty for the offence includes the cancellation of the licence under Rule 49 of the BIS Rules. Such a drastic step severely affects the business and reputation of the Licensee, whose functioning depends on the trust of customers, and credibility.
All of the painstaking efforts to build these, would be negated and destroyed in a single stroke by an action under the Acts, for reasons not even attributable to the jeweller.
