The members of several organisations under the banner of Sarafa Mandal, Jewellers Association of Uttaranchal staged protest march and shouted slogans against the Central Government for imposing excise duty on gold and diamond studded gold ornaments on Saturday. Interestingly they violated the Garhwal commissioner’s order that no protest nor agitation should reach in the 500 metres periphery of Clock Tower dated February 27, on March 5.
They assembled at Saraswati Market, Dehradun and rallied till Punjab Jewellers, Rajpur Road via clock tower. According to agitators, their protest would continue till March 7 in support of demand.
Jewellers’ Association of Uttaranchal (JAU) president Bipin Berry said that following on the call by Gem and Jewellery Federation, jewellers in the State had pulled down their shutter for the last four days starting from Wednesday to protest against the proposed excise duty on jewellery.
JAU vice president Sunil Masson said that the central government had been declaring from various platforms that the trading norms would be liberalised and would be made more trade friendly while the action of imposition of the excise duty is in contradiction to liberalisation.
He said, “On contrary with another authority to deal with and compliance with its tedious norms, the Government is pushing the trade towards license Raj.”
He stated that the traders are expecting that the Government would address the long standing demand for lowering of custom duty on import of gold and increasing the limit of requirement of PAN card for jewellery transaction from Rs2 lakhs to Rs10 lakh. Without addressing our pending demands, the Government has imposed another curb on the trade which the entire jewellery fraternity opposes and condemns, he added.
He said that the jewellery business of around Rs500 crore was adversely affected in four days’ of protest in the Sate. The traders appealed the union finance minister to re-consider his budget proposals and have a favourable view towards the trade.
A protester Praveen Jain said, “In the union budget -2016- 17, the finance minister has proposed imposition of excise duty on jewellery trade which is not acceptable to our trade. Imposition of this duty will hamper their day to day trade activities and some who are not able to cope up might have to close down their businesses,” he said.