Draft Legal Metrology (Indian Standard Time) Rules, 2025- Comments from Stakeholders – Reg

The Indian Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution has released the Draft Legal Metrology (Indian Standard Time) Rules, 2025, for stakeholder comments by 14-Feb-2025. The key points of the draft rules are as follows:

• Objective:
  The rules aim to standardize the use of Indian Standard Time (IST) across all sectors in India, ensuring synchronization with Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) with an offset of +5:30 hours.
• Responsibility:
  The CSIR-National Physical Laboratory (CSIR-NPL) is tasked with maintaining IST and ensuring its traceability to UTC.
• Mandatory Use of IST:
  • IST is mandatory for all legal, administrative, and official documents.
  • It is used in commerce, transport, public administration, legal contracts, and financial operations.
• Prohibited Practices:
  Displaying or using any time other than IST for official or commercial purposes is prohibited, except where permitted by law or government directives.
• Compliance and Penalties:
  • Compliance with these rules will be monitored.
  • Violations may lead to penalties.

The rules aim to ensure uniformity and consistency in timekeeping across the country, with clear legal implications for non-compliance. Stakeholders are encouraged to submit comments by the specified date for further consideration.

Source: https://consumeraffairs.nic.in/sites/default/files/file-uploads/latestnews/Draft%20Rules%20Time%20Dissemination.pdf

Region: India