Who regulates hazardous-area equipment in India
The Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation, PESO, operating under India's Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, is the national authority overseeing safety regulation for petroleum, explosives and equipment intended for use in explosive atmospheres in India. Equipment such as ATEX or IECEx-rated two-way radios, destined for use in refineries, chemical plants, tank farms and similar hazardous Indian sites, generally sits within PESO's regulatory scope.
How ATEX and IECEx certification relates to PESO approval
India is a member of the IECEx scheme, and IECEx test evidence and certification are accepted as a recognised basis for PESO's own evaluation, streamlining what would otherwise be a fully independent testing process. ATEX certification and its underlying test reports can similarly support a PESO application. This does not mean holding an ATEX or IECEx certificate is itself sufficient for use in India; it means that certificate provides evidence PESO can rely on as part of its own separate national approval process, rather than requiring the equipment to be re-tested from scratch.
What PESO actually does with that evidence
PESO does not typically re-test equipment already holding valid IECEx or ATEX certification. Instead, it reviews, evaluates and endorses the equipment against India's own regulatory requirements, based substantially on the international test evidence already provided, without conducting factory inspections of its own. This is a genuinely different function from ATEX or IECEx certification itself: those schemes certify the equipment's safety design and construction; PESO approval is the additional national step confirming that equipment is cleared for use within India's own regulatory framework.
What this means practically for a buyer
An ATEX or IECEx certified radio is not automatically legally usable in an Indian hazardous area on the strength of that certificate alone; the specific PESO approval process for the equipment, or for the site's use of it, still needs to be confirmed and completed. This is a materially easier path than starting from equipment with no international hazardous-area certification at all, since the IECEx or ATEX test evidence substantially reduces what PESO needs to independently verify, but it is not a step that can be skipped on the assumption that international certification alone is sufficient.
What responsibility sits where
Commissioning of hazardous-area equipment at the site level, ensuring it is installed, used and maintained correctly for the classified zone it will operate in, is generally the responsibility of the end user or operator, not something PESO inspects on an ongoing basis after approval. This places real weight on getting the equipment specification right at the point of purchase, matching gas group, temperature class and protection level to the site's own classification, covered in more depth in the dedicated gas-group and Ex-marking articles elsewhere in this series, rather than treating PESO approval as the only checkpoint that matters.
A practical approach
- Specify equipment already holding current ATEX or IECEx certification, since this is the evidence base PESO's own process relies on.
- Confirm the specific PESO approval status or requirement for your equipment and site directly with PESO or a qualified compliance consultant, rather than assuming international certification alone clears the equipment for Indian use.
- Requirements and processes administered by a national regulator are revised from time to time; confirm the current PESO process rather than relying on a fixed summary, this one included.
- Keep the equipment's certificate, specifying its exact configuration of radio, battery and antenna, on file, since this is the document PESO approval and any subsequent site audit will reference.
ASPL is an authorised distributor of Entel in India and supplies ATEX and IECEx certified equipment across the Entel and Icom ranges, and can point buyers toward the certification documentation a PESO approval process will need, though the approval itself rests with PESO and the end user.