Stainless steel QCO exemption ended on 26 October

A new order, dated two days after the window closed

The Ministry of Steel issued a further order on 28 October 2026, and it changes the answer this page gave for two weeks. It was read at source on 31 October 2026, off the ministry’s own Quality Control Orders listing, which could not be reached from this machine on 27 October.

The order carries the same file number as the April one, S-20011/15/2024-TECH-Part(1), and the same signature, G. Sarathy Raja, Deputy Secretary. Its subject drops a word: where April said “semi-finished and final”, October says “semi-finished”. The opening sentence says why, and it is the sentence that matters most to anyone holding stainless flats. The ministry “had granted QCO compliance exemption for Stainless steel products covered under Indian Standard (IS) IS 6911, IS 5522, IS 15997 till 31.03.2027 vide Gazette Notification No.S.O.3300(E) dated 20.06.2026.”

That is the ministry’s own reading of the June gazette, and it is the thing this page said in October it could not check. The three final-product standards are exempt until 31 March 2027. The April order’s bill of lading test closed on 26 October 2026 and still decides nothing beyond that order; it is not the instrument a final-product importer is relying on now.

Paragraph 2 then grants something new. The ministry’s reason is that IS 14650 is the “intermediate / input material for the said 03 Standards viz. IS6911:2017, IS 5522: 2014 & IS 15997:2012”, and on that footing it exempts 162 grades of semi-finished stainless steel products covered under IS 14650, a standard which it notes “also covers intermediate products of both carbon steel and stainless steel”. The grades are in a four-page annexure. Paragraph 3 sets the validity: “till 31st March 2027, co-terminus with the suspension of the Indian Standards for stainless steel final flat products, as notified in Para 2(b) of Gazette Notification No. S.O. 3300(E) dated 20.06.2026.”

The reader who should act on this is the one who concluded in the last fortnight that imported stainless flats were back under full Quality Control Order compliance. On these documents they are not, until 31 March 2027.

What the April window still decides

A bill of lading issued on 27 October or later does not carry the April exemption. That test has not moved, and paragraph 3 of the April order is still the operative sentence for anything claimed under it: a consignment that went on board on or before 26 October 2026 stays inside that order however long it spends at sea. The document and the bill of lading together are what a customs broker will be asked for.

What has changed is that the April order is no longer the only thing standing between an importer and the four standards.

What the April order says

The Ministry of Steel’s Technical Division issued an order on 27 April 2026, under file number S-20011/15/2024-TECH-Part(1), granting what it calls “QCO compliance exemption for Stainless steel flat (semi-finished and final) products”. It runs to four paragraphs and an annexure.

Paragraph 1 gives the reason and the scope in one sentence: “In pursuance to various representations received from MSMEs and after careful examination of the all aspects of the issue, the Ministry has decided to grant QCO compliance exemption for Stainless steel products covered under following Indian Standard (IS)”. Four standards follow. IS 6911, stainless steel plate, sheet and strip. IS 5522, stainless steel sheets and strips for utensils. IS 15997, low nickel austenitic stainless-steel plate, sheet and strip for utensils and kitchen appliances. And IS 14650, limited to the intermediate product of stainless steel flat products only.

That list is the whole of the scope. A grade outside those four standards is outside the order, and so is any stainless product that is not a flat.

The date is the bill of lading, not the landing

Paragraph 3 is the operative sentence and it is twenty-two words long: “The said exemption shall be valid for imports with Bill of lading having shipped on board date on or before 26.10.2026.”

Two things are worth reading slowly there. The first is that the test is the shipped on board date on the bill of lading. Not the date of the purchase order, not the date of arrival at an Indian port, not the date of customs clearance. A consignment that goes on board on 26 October 2026 is inside the exemption even if it berths in December; one that goes on board on 27 October is outside it even if it clears customs first.

The second is that the order contains no provision for extending itself. Paragraph 4 records only that it issues with the approval of the Competent Authority. When the date fell, it fell for want of another order from the ministry rather than by any term of this one.

Which standards, and which grades

The annexure is the part a buyer has to work with. It is headed “List of Stainless Steel Grades w.r.t. Standards” and runs to 140 numbered rows across four columns: IS 14650:2023, IS 6911:2017, IS 15997:2012 and IS 5522:2014. The footnote reads “CSP - Corresponding product standard”, so each IS 14650 designation is written against the product standard it corresponds to.

Most of the 140 rows are IS 6911 plate, sheet and strip. The two utensils standards carry far fewer. Under IS 5522 the annexure names three grades, 304, 302 and 430, which are the ones a cookware or kitchenware maker sources most of the time. Under IS 15997 it names the low nickel austenitic N-series. For a sheet-metal shop in Rajkot or a utensils unit in Ahmedabad buying imported coil, those two short columns are the ones to check a proforma invoice against, because a grade that is not in them does not become exempt by being stainless.

The June amendment, and the part nobody can check

There is a second document, it is newer, and it is the one the compliance advice circulating about stainless steel mostly rests on. On 20 June 2026 the Ministry of Steel issued S.O. 3300(E), the Steel and Steel Products (Quality Control) Amendment Order, 2026, published in the Gazette of India on 22 June under CG-DL-E-22062026-273720. Unlike the April order this one is a gazette notification, made under section 16 read with section 17 and sub-section (3) of section 25 of the Bureau of Indian Standards Act, 2016, and it amends the Steel and Steel Products (Quality Control) Order, 2024.

It does two things, in two sub-clauses. In Schedule 1, enforcement of the IS number and IS title at serial numbers 23 and 129, and the entries relating to them, “shall not be operative for a period of 3 years from date of publication in the gazette”. And in Schedule 1, enforcement at serial numbers 51, 52 and 53 “shall not be operative for a period up to 31st March, 2027”.

Here is the problem a reader ran into immediately, and the way it was solved. The amendment identifies those five entries by serial number and never by IS number. The map from serial number to standard lives in Schedule 1 of the 2024 parent order, S.O. 3716(E) of 29 August 2024, and that schedule is still not published on the ministry’s Quality Control Orders page or on its archive page. Several compliance summaries asserted that the 31 March 2027 suspension covered the utensils standard, and this page would not state it as a fact on the strength of a summary.

The order of 28 October 2026 settles it, from the other direction. It does not publish Schedule 1 either. It does something better for a reader: it names the standards. The ministry writes that exemption for IS 6911, IS 5522 and IS 15997 runs till 31 March 2027 by virtue of S.O. 3300(E), and calls paragraph 2(b) of that notification the suspension of the Indian Standards for stainless steel final flat products. Paragraph 2(b) is the serial 51, 52 and 53 clause. The serial numbers and the IS numbers are now tied together by the ministry that wrote both documents, which is a stronger source than the schedule would have been read alone.

What the April order does not do

It does not name a Quality Control Order. The subject line and paragraph 1 both say “QCO compliance exemption” without identifying the order the exemption is from, which is a real difference from the notifications this site usually reports: an order like the Scheme II route DPIIT opened for ten Quality Control Orders carries an S.O. number and names its parent. This one is an administrative order on the ministry’s own website with a file number. It works from the IS numbers and the grade annexure instead, which is why the annexure matters as much as the date.

It also does not stand alone on that page. The ministry’s Quality Control Orders listing carries several distinct exemption instruments touching stainless steel or steel imports: this order of 27 April 2026; an “Exemption of input adherence of Stainless Steel flat products” of 31 March 2026, with earlier ones of 20 November 2025 and 7 October 2025; and “QCO compliance exemption order of listed HS codes” of 8 April 2026 and 20 November 2025. Input adherence and QCO compliance are not the same relief, and a consignment is covered by the instrument whose terms it meets, not by the one that mentions stainless steel nearest the top of the page.

What neither order touches is the obligation itself. Nothing here changes what BIS certification requires of a product once a window closes, and nothing here moves a commencement date in any other Quality Control Order.

What to do with this

If your material is a final flat product under IS 6911, IS 5522 or IS 15997, the date to work to is 31 March 2027, and the document to keep is the order of 28 October 2026, which states it. Print it with the June gazette behind it. A broker or a licensing consultant still working to 26 October 2026 is working from the April order alone, and the ministry has since written down a longer date for those three standards.

If your material is semi-finished, read the annexure to the October order before assuming you are covered. It runs to 162 numbered grades, each written as an IS 14650 designation against its corresponding product standard, and a grade that is not on that list does not become exempt by being stainless. This is the part worth checking against a proforma invoice line by line.

If you have goods on the water claimed under the April order, that order’s own test has not changed: get the bill of lading and read the shipped on board date off it. A supplier’s word that the goods were “despatched in October” is not that date, and the broker will want the document.

What nobody can still check is Schedule 1 of the 2024 order itself. It remains unpublished, so the serial numbers in the June gazette are readable only through what the ministry has since said about them. That is a sound source and it is not the same as the schedule.

Both exemptions were granted on representations from micro, small and medium enterprises, which is the clearest signal in either document of who was finding compliance hard. The October order repeats the April order’s phrase about representations received from MSMEs word for word. It is also the second time this year that a date on these four standards has moved, which is worth holding in mind before treating 31 March 2027 as fixed: these orders have been reissued before, and the one that decides a consignment is whichever is current when it ships.

Nor is a later date for a small unit a fixture of these orders. The three woven-sack QCOs, now deferred to 6 November 2026 and 6 January 2027, set one date for everyone and carry no later column for a micro or small unit at all.

EngiNewsIndia reads these orders at source. All three PDFs are linked below, and the rest of this beat is on the policy, schemes and MSME page.