Jewellers’ Association of Uttaranchal State president Bipin Berry said that jewellery trade was being adversely affected after the Centre had made mandatory for the customers to submit photo copy of PAN cards if they purchased gold items beyond Rs one lakh from a shop. Out of around 125 crore, only 14 crore have PAN cards, he added.
According to him, previous Congress-led Government at the Centre had made mandatory for the jewellery traders to collect photo copy of PAN cards from customers if they purchased gold items beyond Rs5 lakh. It did not affect them much, he said. However, after Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley having lowered the bar from Rs5 lakh to 1 lakh has landed us in problem, he said.
He said around 70 per cent of total population of the country lived in villages and their source of income was from agriculture sector and this sector had been exempted from tax. How rural people will submit photo copy of Pan cards to the shopkeepers if their income is depended on agriculture. If they have not procured Pan cards would they be not allowed to purchase gold itemsIJ
Such decision would affect the most the small jewellary shops as their customers are low and medium income class people, he added. He said that such a rule being imposed on the gold buyers would not help the Centre in the least in checking proliferation of black money. The rural people would suffer instead, he said. They would be in trouble in purchasing gold during marriage ceremony and other religious occasions.
He appealed to Arun Jaitley to reconsider the decision and have it withdrawn in both the Houses of parliament. The government should encourage small scale industry rather than suppressing them. Among those present on the occasion were Praveen Jain, Manmeet Singh, Ashok Jain, Ashok Verma, Raju Verma, Jasbeer Singh, Pradeep Verma, Manish Jain and Gurjeet Singh.