Gold Hallmarking to be made mandatory from 15 Jan 2020: Paswan

The Minister said that hallmarking will benefit the poor people in villages and small towns who are not able to make out the purity of gold they have been buying.

The Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Shri Ram Vilas Paswan today announced that Gold Hallmarking will be made mandatory across the nation from 15th January 2020. Addressing media after the announcement, Shri Paswan said that Hallmarking of Gold Jewellery & Artefacts is being made mandatory in India for which a notification will be taken out by the Department of Consumer Affairs and a period of one year will be given for implementation to ensure that new A&H centers will be set up by private entrepreneurs at locations where demand of Gold Jewellery and artifacts arises ;completion of the registration process of jewelers and one year time for retailers of jewelry to clear their existing stocks. The Minister said that hallmarking will benefit the poor people in villages and small towns who are not able to make out the purity of gold they have been buying.

The BIS (Bureau of Indian standards) Act 2016 has to enable provisions under Section 14 & Section 16 for making hallmarking of gold jewelry and artifacts mandatory by the Central Government. This will make it compulsory for all the jewelers selling gold jewelry and artifacts to register with BIS and sell only hallmarked Gold jewelry and artifacts. The draft Quality Control Order for mandatory hallmarking of gold jewelry and artifacts has been hosted on the WTO website on 10th October 2019 for comments for a period of 60 days.

The BIS Act 2016 has been implemented with effect from 12th October 2017 and BIS Hallmarking Regulations 2018 notified with effect from 14-6-2018. BIS has been running a hallmarking scheme for gold jewelry since April 2000. As of 31st October 2019, there are 877 Assaying and hallmarking centers spread in 234 district locations across the country and so far 26,019 jewelers have taken BIS registration.

(With Inputs from PIB)