The increase has been notified through the Bureau of Indian Standards (Hallmarking) Amendment Regulations, 2026, dated 14 September 2026. Under the amended Schedule IV, the hallmarking fee payable by jewellers to recognised Assaying and Hallmarking Centres (AHCs) for gold articles has been fixed at Rs 75 per article.
All India Gem & Jewellery Domestic Council (GJC) has expressed strong concern over the increase in gold hallmarking and has urged the Government and the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) to immediately review the decision and retain the existing charge pending stakeholder consultation.
The hike represents an increase of approximately 67 per cent in one stroke over the prevailing charge of Rs 45 per article, it noted.
GJC said its objection is therefore not to hallmarking, but to the sharp escalation in the cost of mandatory compliance at a stage when hallmarking volumes and geographical coverage have substantially expanded.
According to Government data, more than 60 crore gold articles had been hallmarked with HUID between 1 July 2021 and 5 March 2026, while mandatory hallmarking had progressively expanded to 380 districts by March 2026. BIS also stated that more than 30 enforcement actions against jewellers were undertaken during 2025-26.
GJC said believes that such growth in volumes should ordinarily lead to greater efficiencies and economies of scale.
A 67 per cent increase in the per-article charge therefore deserves a transparent assessment of the underlying cost structure before being passed on to the trade and ultimately to the consumer, it added.
GJC said it is concerned that increasing the prescribed hallmarking fee does not address the more fundamental issues already affecting the hallmarking ecosystem.
The Council has received industry feedback regarding aggressive discounting, commercial inducements and unhealthy competition among certain service providers for securing hallmarking volumes.
Where the prescribed rate itself is not uniformly realised in practice, merely increasing the notified fee may not resolve the underlying viability and governance concerns, it said.
GJC said the burden is particularly significant in the case of lightweight and lower-value jewellery, commonly purchased by middle-income and mass-market consumers.
At a time when gold prices are already at elevated levels, adding substantially to the fixed compliance cost of every article ultimately increases the cost borne somewhere in the value chain, it said.
“Hallmarking volumes have expanded enormously. The industry therefore deserves to understand why the per-article charge needs to rise at this stage,” Rajesh Rokde, Chairman, GJC, said in a statement.
“Compliance must remain commercially sustainable. If the compliant route becomes progressively more expensive while informal and unauthorised channels continue to operate, the differential between the two widens. That is not desirable either for the Government, the industry or the consumer,” Avinash Gupta, Vice Chairman, GJC, said.
