The government on Friday announced that the third phase of the mandatory hallmarking, as per the Hallmarking of Gold Jewellery and Gold Artefacts (Amendment) Order, 2022, will be implemented starting today.
As per the official statement from the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, the third phase of the mandatory hallmarking will cover an additional 55 new districts under the mandatory hallmarking system, wherein a hallmarking centre has been spost post-implementation of the second phase of the mandatory hallmarking order thereby making the total number of districts covered under mandatory hallmarking as 343.
One can find the list of the 55 newly included districts for mandatory hallmarking on the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) website, specifically in the hallmarking section.
BIS has successfully implemented Mandatory Hallmarking in 256 districts of India starting from June 23, 2021, in the first phase, and in the additional 32 districts with effect from 4 April 2022, in the second phase wherein more than 4 lakh gold articles are being hallmarked with HUID every day.
Since the introduction of mandatory hallmarking, the number of registered jewellers has surged from 34,647 to 1,81,590, and Assaying and Hallmarking Centers (AHCs) have increased from 945 to 1471. More than 26 crore gold jewellery items have been hallmarked with HUID to date.
To ensure the authenticity and purity of hallmarked gold jewellery items with the HUID number, consumers are encouraged to use the ‘verify HUID’ feature in the BIS Care app, available for download from the Play Store.
The BIS Care App downloads have seen significant growth, increasing from 2.3 lakhs in 2021-22 to 12.4 lakhs in the current fiscal year. Furthermore, ‘verify HUID’ in the BIS Care App has received over one crore hits in the last two years.
Inputs from ANI
