Scores of local jewellers under the banner of Sarrafa Mandal Dehradun protested at the BJP State head office against the Union Government for imposing excise duty on gold and diamond studded gold ornaments on Wednesday. The protesting jewellers also submitted a memorandum addressed to the Union Finance Minister through the party leader here.
Acting on the call for strike by Gem and Jewellery Federation, jewellers in the state also decided to keep their shops shut down for three days from Wednesday in protest against the proposed excise duty on jewellery.
SMD president Praveen Jain said, “In the union budget -2016-17, the union finance minister has proposed imposition of excise duty on jewellery trade which is not acceptable to our trade. Our trade is passing through a lean phase due due to much imposition of customs duty and other curbs. Our trade is mainly run by unorganised goldsmiths who generally manage the show with a few artisans, single handedly. They are neither so educated nor have the expertise to comply with the bureaucratic norms of the excise department. Imposition of this duty will hamper their day to day trade activities and some who are not able to cope up might event have to close down their businesses. Such an action will be against our prime minister Narendra Modi’s vision of skilled India as in our trade every goldsmith educates his children about the intricacies of the trade and develops their skills,” he said.
Dehradun District Jewellers Union president Pankaj Kumar Masson said that the central government had been declaring from various platforms that the trading norms would be liberalised and would be more trade friendly while the action of imposition of the excise duty is in contradiction to liberalisation. He said, “On the 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 Rs two lakhs to Rs 10 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.
Another protester said that jewellery sales in India have fallen in the last two months due to higher gold prices and because the consumers had delayed purchases in the hope of benefitting from a cut in import duty. The government had imposed an excise duty in 2012, but was forced to roll it back after jewellers went on a strike. Jewellers across the state will keep the shutters of the shops closed for three days starting Wednesday. The fraternity is also urging the government to roll back excise duty, he added.
Gurjeet Singh, general secretary, Jewellers Association of Uttarakhand said that the three-day bandh called by the association was successfully implemented on the first day with jeweler shops being kept closed in Dehradun, Haridwar, Jwalapur, Roorkee, laksar, Manglaur, Vikasnagar, Haldwani, Rudrapur, Kotdwar, Ramnagar, Srinagar, Mussoorie, and Rishikesh among other towns.