Disgruntled with the new hallmarking rules, and specifically the norms around the HUID or Hallmarking Unique ID, jewellers are going on a token strike today, the National Task Force on Hallmarking said in a statement on Friday.

The National Task force was formed by 350 associations and federations, representing four zones (East, West, North and South) of the entire gems and jewellery industry. The objective of this committee is to ensure a smooth implementation of mandatory hallmarking across the country.

New rules around hallmarking have upset the jewellery industry, as it faces teething issues in the implementation of the new norms.

“There have been two committees formed and almost 10 meetings held but no relief has yet been offered in writing by BIS or MoCA. BIS, rather than behaving like a standards and quality assurance institution, is playing the role of a revenue department. And gems and jewellery industry has become a soft target for them. Jewellers have waited for almost two months and impractical laws have resulted in the collapse of the industry,” read the statement.

Jewellers are particularly piqued by the rules around HUID, a unique code that will be given to every piece of jewellery at the time of hallmarking. HUID will help identify the jeweller or the Assaying and Hallmarking Centres (AHCs) which had hallmarked the jewellery.

According to jewellers, while the government had assured that the process of HUID will be restricted to AHCs, they too are involved in it, as they have to tag their inventory (each of them) with a unique ID and upload the details on the BIS website and then send it to AHCs for hallmarking.

According to Ashok Minawala, a member of National Task Force on Hallmarking and Former Chairman, All India Gem and Jewellery Domestic Council (GJC), “We have always welcomed hallmarking but we cannot accept the new HUID as it has nothing to do with the purity of gold. The consumer wants the perfect quality of gold jewellery which we are happy to deliver. The new process has been made a 'destructive process' that damages the jewellery being hallmarked. The element of cancellation of registration, penal provisions, search and seizure will ultimately bring ‘Inspector Raaj’ into the industry.”

Apart from these, the jewellers are reporting huge pile-ups in AHCs due to lack of infrastructure.

“It is estimated that yearly almost 10-12 crore (gold jewellery) pieces are manufactured in India. In addition to this existing stock of almost 6-7 crore pieces is yet to be hallmarked. This takes the total count of pieces to be hallmarked in a year to almost 16-18 crore pieces. However, the current speed or capacity of hallmarking centres is about 2 lakh pieces per day. At this speed, it will take almost 800-900 days which is equivalent to 3-4 years to mark this years’ production. Currently, the new marking system i.e., HUID is taking almost 5-10 days to hallmark the products and the industry is on a standstill,” said Dinesh Jain, Member National Task Force on Hallmarking and Director - GJC and Gem and Jewellery Skill Council of India.

In the light of these issues, jewellers are demanding that hallmarking should be based on point of sale as proposed by jewellers, while all other applications of storage, display, transit, exhibit to sale, manufacture etc. except sale should be removed from the BIS Act and Regulation.