Government expands mandatory gold hallmarking to 55 new districts in third phase

Central government on Friday announced the third phase of the mandatory hallmarking order, called the “Hallmarking of Gold Jewellery and Gold Artefacts (Third Amendment) Order, 2023”. The third phase comes into effect from September 8 and will extend the mandatory hallmarking requirement to an additional 55 districts in India, said the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution.

These districts have been selected based on the establishment of hallmarking centres following the implementation of the second phase of the order. This expansion brings the total number of districts covered under mandatory hallmarking to 343.

The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has successfully implemented mandatory hallmarking in 256 districts across the country during the first phase, starting on June 23, 2021. Subsequently, in the second phase, an additional 32 districts were included on April 4, 2022. This initiative has resulted in more than 4 lakh gold articles being hallmarked with HUID (Hallmark Unique Identification) every day.

Since the introduction of mandatory hallmarking, the number of registered jewellers has surged from 34,647 to 181,590, and the count of Assaying and Hallmarking Centres (AHCs) has risen from 945 to 1,471. To date, over 26 crore articles of gold jewellery have been hallmarked with HUID.

“Consumers are encouraged to verify the authenticity and purity of the hallmarked gold jewellery items with HUID number purchased by using ‘verify HUID’ in BIS Care app which can be downloaded from the play store,” the government said in a statement.

The app’s popularity has grown significantly, with downloads increasing from 230,000 in 2021-22 to 1.24 million in the current fiscal year. Moreover, the ‘verify HUID’ feature in the BIS Care App has received more than one crore hits in the past two years, highlighting its usefulness in ensuring the quality and authenticity of gold jewellery, the government said.