One Nation, One Time’ under IST to ensure accuracy and national security: Pralhad Joshi

New Delhi

Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Pralhad Joshi on Wednesday highlighted that the upcoming Legal Metrology (Indian Standard Time) Rules, 2025, will mandate synchronisation of all legal, commercial and administrative activities with Indian Standard Time (IST), prohibiting the use of alternative time references unless explicitly authorised. The minister emphasised the strategic significance of the Time Dissemination Project being implemented by the Department of Consumer Affairs in collaboration with CSIR-NPL and ISRO. Addressing a Round Table Conference on Time Dissemination at Vigyan Bhawan here, the Minister underscored that precise and uniform dissemination of IST across sectors such as financial markets, power grids, telecommunications, transportation, and others is essential to ensuring fairness, accuracy and national security. The initiative aims to deliver IST with millisecond to microsecond accuracy through five Regional Reference Standard Laboratories (RRSLs) equipped with atomic clocks and secure synchronisation protocols like NTP and PTP, ushering in a new era of digital and administrative efficiency under the vision of ‘One Nation, One Time’, he explained. For the common man, this initiative translates into more secure digital transactions, accurate billing in utilities, reduced cybercrime risks and synchronised timekeeping in transportation and communication, ensuring fairness, transparency, and trust in day-to-day services.