Centre makes hallmarking of gold jewellery mandatory

New Delhi: The Union government has made hallmarking of gold jewellery compulsory.

The jewellers across the country will get one year to implement this order, informed Minister of Consumer Affairs Ram Vilas Paswan on Tuesday.

He said that there are 892 hallmark labs across the country and those violating the order would have to pay a minimum fine of Rs 1 lakh or 5 times the price of the article.

The violators could face one-year imprisonment as well.

Paswan said that the purpose of making hallmarking mandatory for Gold Jewelry and Artefacts is to ensure that consumers are not cheated while buying gold ornaments and get the purity as marked on the ornaments, they are better informed about the purity of Gold which will now be in only 3 caratage i.e. 14, 18 and 22 and corruption is removed.

Explaining the reasons for the one-year implementation period, Paswan said that this will ensure that Jewelers registration process can be completed and jewelers/retailers get time for clearing their old/existing stock and also so that additional A&H centres can be set up by private entrepreneurs at various locations.

BIS (Hallmarking) Regulations, 2018 were notified w.e.f. 14.06.2018. BIS is running a hallmarking scheme for gold jewelry since April 2000. The BIS Act 2016 has enabling provisions under Section 14 & Section 16 for mandatory hallmarking of Gold jewellery & artefacts by the Central Government.

This will make it compulsory for all the jewellers selling Gold jewellery and artefacts to register with BIS & sell only hallmarked Gold jewellery & artefacts.

The draft Quality Control Order (QCO) for mandatory hallmarking of gold jewellery and gold artefacts was hosted on WTO website on 10 October 2019 for comments for a period of 60 days. No comments have been received on the draft QCO.