Jewellers across India will go on a token strike on Monday in protest against the implementation of mandatory hallmarking process by the Bureau of Indian Standards.
The industry has formed National Task Force with 350 associations and federations representing all four zones of the entire gems and jewellery industry.
While the industry is open to abide by the hallmarking norms, it is against arbitrary implementation of six-digit Hallmarking Unique identification (HUID). The industry claims that HUID is against the principle of ease of doing business. It is cumbersome and shall lead to harassment for customers, it said.
Ashok Minawala, Member-National Task Force on Hallmarking, said the new HUID has nothing to do with the purity of gold, but it is just a tracking mechanism. The new process has been made a “destructive process” that damages jewellery being hallmarked, he said.
Dinesh Jain, Member-National Task Force on Hallmarking, said there are about 16-18 crore pieces of jewellery to be hallmarked but the current capacity of hallmarking centres is about two lakh pieces a day. So, at this rate it will take almost 3-4 years to hallmark the entire jewellery sector, he said.
HUID is taking almost 5-10 days to hallmark the products, resulting in delays, he added. Also there have been lots of issues such as double HUID on same piece, same HUID on multiple jewellery.