CSIR-National Physical Laboratory (CSIR-NPL), the National Metrology Institute (NMI) of India, is a premier laboratory, founded on January 04, 1947 under the umbrella of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi. The Government of India enacted the “Standards of Weights and Measures Act” for the first time in 1956 to ensure that every citizen has access to uniform standards of weights and measures those are traceable to the SI units. During the year 1957, India became member of the General Conference of Weight and Measures (CGPM), International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), an International Inter-Governmental organization constituted by diplomatic treaty i.e. ‘The Metre Convention’.

Metrology is the science of measurements comprising of scientific, legal and industrial metrology aspects. Being the Custodian of National Standards of Measurements, CSIR-NPL has a mandate to establish, maintain and continuously upgrade the national primary and secondary standards and provide the measurement traceability through apex level calibrations and testing. CSIR-NPL completed its 75 glorious years after the foundation and celebrated Platinum Jubilee Year graced by the presence of Hon’ble Prime Minister Sh. Narendra Modi. On the auspicious occasion, Hon’ble Prime Minister dedicated the National Atomic Timescale and Bhartiya Nirdeshak Dravya (BND®) –Certified reference Materials (CRMs) to the nation and also laid the foundation stone of National Environmental Standard Laboratory.

Recently, in a landmark and historic decision, the ground breaking R&D by the world’s scientific and technical community, resulted into acceptance and adoption of redefined International Standard (SI) units by CGPM at BIPM on November 16, 2018 by 60 member states. The new definition of SI units successfully replaced the artefact-based units and aptly opened up the new era for quantum world by linking all the seven base units i.e. the kilogram (kg), metre (m), second (s), ampere (A), kelvin (K), mole (mol) and candela (cd) to constants of nature, which are invariants of time and space. Worldwide, the redefined SI units have been implemented on May 20, 2019 i.e. the ‘World Metrology Day (WMD-2019)’ in terms of physical constants. Since fundamental constants are inherently stable, these are chosen so that the redefined SI need not be modified again in near future to accommodate the possible improvements in the realization of base units. CSIR-NPL has already established the quantum standards of time, length, voltage, resistance; and striving to establish and realized new redefined units of mass, kelvin, current, mole, Pascal, etc through the fundamental in-house development approaches.

CSIR-NPL has already published more than 200 Calibration Measurement Capabilities (CMCs) on BIPM Key Comparison Database (KCDB) and continuously participated in more than 170 international inter-comparisons, organized by BIPM and Asia Pacific Metrology Program (APMP) to enhance our measurement capabilities, global visibility and support our existing and new CMCs. Currently, it provides more than 3500 calibrations to various industries, strategic, academia and government agencies. The users of the CSIR-NPL services also include some customers from SAARC and APMP countries. The CSIR-NPL, being NMI of India, is also playing exceptional role in taking the metrology field to masses through its invaluable metrological services to stakeholders; educational, awareness, training and academic activities and campaign for students, industry, academicians, policy makers, regulators etc.; and providing time to time need based solutions, services, technologies and advises to all the stakeholders and Government agencies etc. It is also helping Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and Department of Legal Metrology in the formulation of written standards and assisting National Accreditation for Calibration and Testing Laboratories (NABL) in many ways in accreditation of calibration and testing laboratories. Thus CSIR-NPL is the backbone of the national quality infrastructure comprising of metrology, standards and regulators, and accreditation bodies.

With these efforts of CSIR-NPL is fostering to achieve the self-reliance through metrology development for the inclusive growth of India, so that the products and processes made in India has a global acceptance, measured once accepted everywhere

Dr. Sanjay Yadav, 
Dr. Dilip Shivagan, 
Dr. Subhasis Panja, 
Prof. Venu Gopal Achanta
CSIR-NPL

Atomic clock based Primary Timescale for realization and Dissemination of Indian Standard Time (IST)