What is Gold Hallmarking: Gold hallmarking is a purity certification for precious metal. Presently, gold hallmarking is voluntary. Currently, 40 % of the gold jewellery is being hallmarked.

Which metals are covered hallmarking in India:

• The government, through a notification issued on June 14, 2018, notified two categories—gold jewellery and gold artefacts; and silver jewellery and silver artefacts—under the purview of hallmarking. So, hallmarking in India is available for jewellery of only two metals—gold and silver.
• However, a certain category of jewellery and items will be exempted from the mandatory requirement of hallmarking.

Hallmarking scheme: BIS is already running the hallmarking scheme for gold jewellery since April 2000. Government had announced mandatory hallmarking of gold jewellery & artefacts in November 2019.

What are the purity standards for gold and silver under the hallmarking scheme:

• As per BIS standards, there are three categories of hallmarking based on purity of gold—22 carat, 18 carat and 14 carat. However, the ministry on 15 June announced that “Gold of Additional carats 20, 23 and 24 will also be allowed for Hallmarking.”
• The ministry further said that jewellers can continue to buy back old gold jewellery without a hallmark from consumers.

What is in news : Government will implement mandatory hallmarking of gold jewellery and artefacts from June 15, 2021.

Details :

• Earlier this deadline was June 1, which was extended by a fortnight because of Covid-19 pandemic.
• To ensure proper coordination and resolve issues while implementation, a committee headed by Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) Director-General Pramod Tewari has been established.

Why Hallmarking is mandatory now: Government has launched mandatory hallmarking of gold with the aim of ensuring consumers do not get cheated while buying ornaments. Mandatory hallmarking will protect public against lower caratage and it will ensure consumers get purity as marked on jewellery. Thus, from 15 June 2021, jewellers will only be allowed to sell gold jewellery of 14, 18 and 22 carats. Registration process has been made online and automatic.

Will there be any penalty on jewellers for non-compliance with the hallmarking norm:  Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Piyush Goyal has said that “no penalty will be imposed till August 2021”.

Note :

• It has been decided that hallmarking will be initially be starting with 256 districts of the country which have assaying marking centres.
• Districts in Karnataka: 1. Bengaluru Urban 2. Tumkur 3. Hassan 4. Mandya 5. Mysore 6. Dakshina Kannada 7. Shimoga 8. Uduppi 9. Davanagere 10. Uttara Kannada 11. Belgaum 12. Dharwad 13. Bijapur 14. Gulbarga