What this document is
Revision 12 of the CRS frequently asked questions is dated June 2018 and runs to 22 pages. Part I has 53 general questions on registration. Part II has 46 decisions on whether particular products are covered by the 2012 Compulsory Registration Order.
It has been replaced by MeitY’s FAQs modified as on 28 September 2022, which are longer and reflect the 2021 order. We list the 2018 edition because crsbis.in still links to it, and because older test reports and decisions were made under it.
Part I: general questions
Much of Part I carried over into the 2022 edition with little change: the date of manufacture or landing decides whether goods are caught, the manufacturer holds the registration for each factory, test reports must come from a BIS-recognised laboratory and be no more than 90 days old, and brands can share a test report.
The answers on series testing were:
- Identical models with minor changes go by MeitY’s series guidelines (Q21).
- Future models can be included in an existing series of up to ten models through a laboratory validation report (Q38).
- Only the worst-case sample of a series is tested, with documents justifying the series (Q53).
- For very large ADP equipment such as servers, the power supply and other safety-critical areas can be taken out and tested separately (Q52).
Part II: product coverage decisions
The 2018 decisions that matter most for IT equipment were:
- ADP machines covered data preparation, processing and storage equipment, personal computers, plotters, printers, scanners and VDUs, with personal computers exempted (Part II, Q10). Desktops were exempt (Q2).
- Networking devices such as wireless access points, controllers and switches were outside the order (Q15).
- Session border controllers and unified communication servers were covered as ADP (Q20).
- Projectors, NAS devices, hard disk media players and all-in-one computers, thin clients and mini PCs were treated as ADP machines (Q27 to Q30).
- PABXs, feature-rich VoIP products and IP transcoders were outside the order (Q18, Q23, Q26).
What changed in 2022
The 2022 edition keeps most of these decisions but updates others. For example, a printer built into an ATM was not covered in 2018 but is covered as part of the host product in 2022, and the 2018 HSE criteria have been replaced by later notifications. Always check the 2022 FAQs before relying on an answer here.