The Competition Commission has dismissed allegations of unfair business practices against the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) with regard to granting of recognition to material testing laboratories.
The complaint filed by one Prem Prakash, who runs a material testing laboratory in the state of Madhya Pradesh, related to a scheme of BIS -- Laboratory Recognition Scheme (LRS).
As per the scheme, a laboratory seeking recognition needs to have a particular accreditation.
Also, the accreditation body (through which the accreditation is taken by the applicant lab) should be a full member of Asia Pacific Laboratory Accreditation Corporation (APLAC) or International Laboratory Accreditation Corporation (ILAC).
Apart from the BIS director general, the complaint was also against the Secretary of Ministry of Consumer Affairs.
The complainant had alleged that BIS had contravened Section 4 of the Competition Act by making accreditation to IS/ISO/IEC-17025 or ISO-IEC-17025 as well as full membership of ILAC or APLAC mandatory in the LRS.
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) dismissed the case after finding "no prima facie case of contravention of Section 4 of the (Competition) Act" against BIS.
Section 4 of the Competition Act pertains to abuse of dominant position.
The BIS has carried out the activity of prescribing of criteria for recognition of laboratories under LRS with a purpose to ensure "quality in laboratory testing services" by outside laboratories, which would provide product certification under its product certification scheme and assist BIS in carrying out its statutory duties and functions under the BIS Act, the CCI said in an order on June 29.
The regulator noted that mere exclusion of some laboratories from being recognised under the LRS due to the criteria prescribed by BIS does not imply that the criteria is anti-competitive and there has been contravention of the provisions of the Competition Act.
"When criteria for quality are prescribed, it is inevitable that those entity(s) that do not satisfy the prescribed criteria would be excluded," the CCI said.
"The prerogative of deciding the criteria to be prescribed is vested in the BIS under the BIS Act and it appears to have acted in accordance with mandate vested in it," it added.
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