The fabrication unit in Nagpur had been buying IS 2062 E250 plates from the same supplier for four years without a problem. The plates arrived with ISI marks and mill test certificates. The quality team stamped the MTCs, logged the heat numbers, and released the material to production.
In October, a TPI inspector from Bureau Veritas visited the project site for a pre-dispatch inspection. He pulled up the BIS portal on his laptop, entered the CM/L number from the MTC, and showed the quality manager the result: licence status — cancelled. The licence had expired four months ago. The mill had renewed its application but the renewal was still under BIS review. In the interim, the mill had continued production and marking.
Forty-two tonnes of fabricated structural steel — already cut, drilled, and partially assembled — sat under a hold notice.
Why the Physical ISI Mark Is Not Enough
The ISI mark is a symbol of conformity to a BIS-certified standard. It is meaningful when three conditions are all true simultaneously:
- The manufacturer holds an active BIS licence for the product category
- The product was manufactured under that licence's scope and conditions
- The MTC carries the correct, currently-valid CM/L number
When condition one fails — as in the Nagpur case — the mark becomes legally meaningless, regardless of whether the steel meets IS 2062 requirements. The ISI mark is not a chemical test. It is a certification claim. That claim must be verifiable at the point of use, not just at the point of purchase.
Government project TPI inspectors, CPWD quality managers, and infrastructure project QA teams routinely do BIS portal checks. Procurement teams and fabricators who don't perform the same checks are flying blind.
How to Verify BIS Licence Validity
The BIS India portal (bis.gov.in) provides a public product certification database. The licence lookup function accepts the CM/L number from an MTC and returns:
- Licence holder name and address
- Product category and standard
- Licence issue date
- Licence validity / expiry date
- Current status (active, cancelled, suspended, renewal pending)
This check takes under two minutes. It requires the CM/L number, which must appear on any MTC from a BIS-certified mill.
The verification steps:
- Navigate to the BIS product certification portal
- Select the product certification licence search function
- Enter the CM/L number from the MTC
- Confirm the licence holder name matches the mill on the MTC
- Confirm the licence is currently active and within validity
- Confirm the standard scope includes the IS 2062 grade and product form (plates, coils, sections)
If the portal shows "cancelled," "suspended," or an expiry date that precedes the MTC date, the material fails BIS certification — regardless of the physical ISI mark.
What the BIS Portal Can and Cannot Tell You
The portal confirms that a mill held a valid licence at the time of inquiry. It does not retroactively confirm whether the licence was active on the date the specific heat was produced. For recently expired licences, this creates a grey zone: material produced in the final weeks before expiry may have been produced legitimately under a valid licence, but distinguishing this from material produced after expiry requires the mill's own production records.
In practice, TPI inspectors and project quality managers adopt a binary rule: if the licence is not currently active, the material is held pending further investigation. The burden is on the supplier or fabricator to prove the production date fell within the valid licence period.
This is why discovering an expired BIS licence at project delivery is a serious problem. The evidence needed to clear the hold — production logs, BIS surveillance visit records, date-coded production tags — must come from the mill, and mills are not always cooperative when it exposes their own compliance failures.
Building BIS Licence Verification into Supplier Qualification
The only reliable way to prevent the Nagpur scenario is to move BIS licence verification earlier in the supply chain — from goods-inward to supplier qualification and then to purchase order.
At supplier qualification (annual or semi-annual review):
- Collect the mill's current BIS licence certificate, not just the CM/L number
- Verify the CM/L number on the BIS portal
- Record the licence expiry date in the supplier master file
- Set a calendar reminder for 60 days before expiry to request renewal confirmation
At purchase order stage:
- Include a contract clause requiring the supplier to notify you if their BIS licence lapses or is suspended
- Include a clause requiring the CM/L number on every MTC
- Make it a condition of payment that the BIS licence is active at the time of supply
At goods inward:
- Verify the CM/L number on the MTC against the BIS portal before releasing material to production
- Record the portal check result (date, portal status) on the goods receipt document
- Flag any discrepancy to the quality manager before the material moves
For high-value or critical structural projects:
- Request a copy of the mill's current BIS certificate alongside the MTC, not just the CM/L number on the MTC
- For consignments above a defined weight threshold, make a BIS portal check mandatory regardless of existing supplier qualification status
The Fabricator's Liability
When fabricated steel using non-certified material reaches a project site, the liability does not sit solely with the mill. If the fabricator accepted the material into production without verifying the BIS certification status, the fabricator is exposed on two fronts: contractual non-conformance with the project specification, and potential quality liability if the material performance is later questioned.
The ISI mark is a shortcut that works when everyone in the chain is doing their job. When a mill's certification lapses and the mark continues to appear on material, that shortcut fails. The only protection is verification — checking the BIS portal at goods inward and not treating the physical mark as a substitute for an active licence.