The government will make the process of hallmarking of gold jewellery mandatory from today, but it will give one year’s time to jewellers to register themselves with the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and clear their old stock. A notification to make mandatory hallmarking of gold jewellery from 15 January 2021 will be issued by the Consumer Affairs Ministry. Addressing the media, Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Ram Vilas Paswan said, “the purpose of making hallmarking mandatory for gold jewellery and artefacts is to ensure that consumers are not cheated while buying gold ornaments and get the purity as marked on the ornaments.”
Here is all you need to know about the hallmarking of gold jewellery:
1) Gold hallmarking is a purity certification of the precious metal and is voluntary in nature at present.
2) Hallmarking will be done for jewellery in 3 categories – 14 carat, 18 carat and 22 carat.
3) Right now, ten grades of gold jewellery is available.
4) The mandatory hallmarking of gold jewellery will protect buyers against lower carratage.
5) The mandatory hallmarking will also ensure that consumers don’t get cheated while buying gold ornaments and get the same purity and carat as marked on the ornament.
6) If jewellery or artefacts made of 14, 18 and 22 carat gold are sold without a BIS hallmark, then the jeweller could attract penalty and imprisonment of one year, PTI quoted Ram Vilas Paswan as saying.
7) Hallmark on gold jewellery now has four marks: BIS mark, purity in carat, assay centre’s name and jewellers’ identification mark.
8) An awareness campaign on mandatory hallmarking for jewellers and common consumers will be organized at various locations across the country.
9) The BIS is already running a hallmarking scheme for gold jewellery since April 2000 and around 40 per cent of gold jewellery is being hallmarked currently.
10) As on 31st December 2019, there are 892 Assaying and Hallmarking centres spread in 234 District locations across the country and so far 28,849 jewellers have been registered by BIS.
-With agency inputs
Source: livemint
