Minister of State for Agriculture and Member of Parliament from Rajkot Mohan Kundaria on Monday gave assurance to the agitating jewellers to discuss issue of excise duty on ornaments with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Minister was in his constituency Rajkot and met jewellers. Rajkot is considered as one of the important centres in the country in jewellery making. According to agitating jewellers, in the recently presented Union Budget by the Finance Minister Arun Jaitely, the proposal of 1 per cent excise duty would ruin their business and created plethora of complexity.
Over the past fortnight the jewellers are on strike for proposed excise duty as well as another proposal in the Budget pertaining to mandatory PAN card on the part of customers in case they would purchase jewellery of Rs 2 lakh and above. The agitating jewellers believe that asking for PAN from every customer wouldn’t be practical. Hence they are demanding withdrawal of excise duty as well as removal of the clause to make PAN card mandatory for the purchasing gold jewellery of Rs 2 lakh and above.
Kundaria gave assurance to them that the leaders of BJP as well as senior functionaries in the Union Government were trying to resolve their issues. He further said that a delegation of Members of Parliament from Gujarat including him would take time from the Prime Minister and tell him about the problem due to excise duty and mandatory PAN card.