News Analysis India

Tag: Gold jewellery

  • Jharkhand man donates Rs 17 lakh gold jewellery in Ujjain temple to fulfill wife’s last wish

    By PTI

    UJJAIN: A man from Jharkhand has donated gold jewellery worth Rs 17 lakh at the Mahakaleshwar temple in Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain district as per the last wish of his wife, a temple official said on Tuesday.

    The woman, Rashmi Prabha, who died some time back, was a devotee of Lord Mahakaleshwar and used to regularly visit the temple.

    After ailing for a long time, she had expressed a wish to offer her jewellery to God at the temple before her death, the temple’s administrator, Ganesh Kumar Dhakad, said.

    On Saturday, her husband Sanjeev Kumar, a resident of Bokaro in Jharkhand, and his mother donated his wife’s jewellery, including necklaces, bangles and earrings collectively weighing 310 gm and valued at about Rs 17 lakh, at the temple, the official said.

    The Mahakaleshwar temple is one of the 12 ‘jyotirlingas’ in the country.

    Last week, the temple’s management committee had informed that in the three-and-a-half-month post-lockdown period from June 28 to October 15 this year, it received a total of Rs 23.03 crore from entry tickets, sale of laddus, offerings in donation boxes, bookings for the Bhasma Aarati and through other means.

    The temple reopened for devotees on June 28, after remaining shut for over two-and-a-half months due to the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • Changes made to Bureau of Indian Standards’ hallmarking scheme

    By Express News Service

    KOCHI: With the Government of India making hallmarking of gold jewellery mandatory from June this year, jewellers have been complaining of certain issues. To address the problems faced by jewellers, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has given relaxation in hallmarking.

    According to the bureau, the order has been made applicable only in 256 districts in India where BIS recognised Assaying and Hallmarking Centres (AHC) are available. “In Kerala, all districts are covered except Idukki,” said BIS officials with the Kochi office. 

    Small jewellers with an annual turnover of up to Rs 40 lakh have been excluded from mandatory hallmarking. They are permitted to sell jewellery without hallmarking.

    “Jewellery weighing up to 2 gm has been excluded from mandatory requirement. The BIS registration is to be obtained by the jewellers or manufacturers who sell the jewellery and have an annual turnover of more than Rs 40 lakh,” said the officials. 

    Those who undertake job work need not obtain registration. The jeweller or wholesaler who has given the job work has to take the registration and send jewellery for hallmarking.

    All the fees for registration of jewellers have been waived off and it has been made a simple one-time process on the BIS portal www.manakonline.in. After obtaining registration, the certificate can be downloaded immediately without any payment of fees. The registration once taken is valid for a lifetime.Hallmarking of gold jewellery began in 2000.