While the central government has already confirmed that gold should be sold and bought only with the hallmark, there are reports that the new gold hallmark rules will be implemented from April 1.
On gold hallmarking, sale of hallmarked gold jewelery and gold artefacts without a six-digit HUID will not be allowed from April 1, the central government said. The Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution has issued an official statement in this regard.
To encourage sale of quality gold in micro scale units, it has been decided to provide 80 per cent concession on BIS certification/minimum mark fee in various product certification schemes. The decision was taken after a review meeting of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) held yesterday under the chairmanship of Union Cabinet Minister Piyush Goyal.
Niti Kare, Additional Secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs, said, “In the interest of consumers, it has been decided that sale of hallmarked gold jewelery and gold artefacts will not be allowed without HUID from April 1.
Gold hallmarking is a certification of the purity level of the precious metal. From June 2021, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has made hallmarking mandatory for gold jewelery and artefacts. After that, the government decided to implement mandatory gold hallmarking in a phased manner. In the first phase, Hallmark has been made mandatory in 256 districts and in the second phase in 32 districts in total 288 districts. 51 more districts are currently being added to this number.
Now let’s see what HUID is.
A Hallmark Unique Identification Number (HUID) is a six-digit alphanumeric code consisting of numbers and letters. It was first introduced on 1 June 2021. A HUID will be assigned to each piece of jewelry at the time of hallmarking. And it is unique to every jewel.
The jewelery is manually stamped with a unique number at the Assaying & Hallmarking Center (AHC).
Before the introduction of the 6-digit alphanumeric HUID code, hallmarked jewelery had four marks. The BIS mark consists of purity and fineness of gold in carat, grading center identification mark/number and jeweler identification mark/number.