Srinagar, Jan 27: Aiming towards ‘One Nation, One Time’ and achieving precision in Indian Standard Time (IST), the Department of Consumer Affairs, Government of India has undertaken a project in association with the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and India Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to disseminate IST with millisecond to microsecond accuracy. The project aims to create technology and infrastructure to disseminate IST from five Legal Metrology laboratories across India.
According to the reports, this precision is vital for sectors such as navigation, telecommunications, power grid synchronization, banking, digital governance, and cutting-edge scientific research, including deep space navigation and gravitational wave detection. Despite its importance, IST is not mandatorily adopted by all Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) and Internet Service Providers (ISPs), many of whom rely on foreign time sources like GPS. Synchronizing all networks and systems to IST is essential for national security, real-time applications and the smooth operation of critical infrastructure.
To address these challenges, a high-power inter-ministerial committee was constituted to develop a policy framework, regulation, and legislation for the adoption of IST under the Legal Metrology Act of 2009. Chaired by the Secretary (Consumer Affairs), the committee includes representatives from NPL, ISRO, IIT Kanpur, NIC, CERT-In, SEBI and key government departments like Railways, Telecom, and Financial Services, etc. Various meetings of the committee were held to draft the rules to mandate IST adoption, establish synchronization guidelines for networks, prepare regulatory frameworks for time-stamping and cybersecurity and monitor the progress of the IST dissemination project through advanced technologies and infrastructure.
The Draft Legal Metrology (Indian Standard Time) Rules, 2025 are published by the Legal Metrology Division, Department of Consumer Affairs as a comprehensive rule standardizing and mandating the use of Indian Standard Time (IST) across India. The draft Legal Metrology (Indian Standard Time) Rules are published on the website of the Department for public consultation on 15.01.2025. The comments may be submitted by 14.02.2025. The website link for the draft Rules is as follows:
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