NEW DELHI: From March next year, all entities in India will be required to use Indian Standard Time (IST) for legal, commercial, digital and administrative activities, with govt on Saturday notifying the Legal Metrology (Indian Standard Time) Rules, 2026.The rules, notified under the Legal Metrology Act, will come into force 180 days after their publication in Gazette, making IST mandatory from around March 2027. Violations of the rules will attract penalties under the Act.The notification makes IST the mandatory time reference for all legal, administrative and official documents unless specifically exempted. It also makes IST the standard time reference across commerce, transport, public administration, legal contracts and financial operations.Entities will not be allowed to use, display or record any time reference other than IST for official purposes, except where foreign time zones are clearly labelled or where alternative time sources are permitted for scientific research, navigation or astronomy.The rules are significant as modern digital infrastructure depends on microsecond-level timing accuracy. Payment systems, stock exchanges, telecom networks, 5G services, digital navigation, power grids and data centres require synchronised clocks to authenticate transactions, coordinate operations and maintain network reliability.The notification establishes a nationwide system for time synchronisation, traceability and cybersecurity, recognising accurate time as critical digital infrastructure. Under the rules, CSIR-National Physical Laboratory (NPL) will continue to maintain India’s primary time scale, UTC(NPLI), from which IST is derived, while Regional Reference Standards Laboratories (RRSLs), ISRO’s NavIC and other authorised timing sources will disseminate official time.
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Another major feature of the rules is the focus on cyber resilience. Organisations must deploy proper time-synchronisation systems, protect networks against spoofing, jamming and cyberattacks, integrate multiple authorised timing sources and maintain contingency mechanisms, including atomic clocks where necessary, to ensure uninterrupted operations.