Festive Season Shocker: Government Hikes Gold Hallmarking Fees to ₹75 Per Article as BIS Enforces New Rates

In a major development ahead of the high-demand festive and wedding season encompassing Navratri, Dussehra, and Diwali, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has notified an immediate hike in statutory hallmarking charges across precious metals. Under the amended Bureau of Indian Standards (Hallmarking) Regulations, 2026, officially gazetted on September 14, 2026, the certification fee for testing and stamping every single gold jewelry piece at Assaying and Hallmarking Centres (AHCs) has been revised upwards from ₹45 to ₹75—marking an abrupt surge of approximately 67 percent.In addition to the base fee, AHCs will collect an administrative fee for BIS at ₹7.50 per gold piece (subject to a ₹20 minimum per consignment), alongside a mandatory baseline consignment processing fee of ₹200 plus applicable taxes. Similarly, silver jewelry hallmarking has been fixed at ₹35 per article with a ₹150 minimum consignment fee and a ₹3.50 BIS levy, piling cost pressures on trade counters at a juncture when retail gold prices have soared past ₹1,51,894 per 10 grams, on top of the standard 3 percent Goods and Services Tax (GST) applied uniformly across intra-state (1.5% CGST + 1.5% SGST) and inter-state (3% IGST) jewelry transactions.Lightweight Jewelry Buyers Hit Hardest as GJC Demands Rollback and Stricter Crackdown on Fake HUIDsBecause official hallmarking charges are levied on a per-unit basis rather than by item weight, the price hike disproportionately penalizes mass-market retail consumers purchasing lightweight, 1-gram to 2-gram ornamental gold, where fixed compliance costs form a significantly larger percentage of the overall making price.Voicing strong opposition against the revision, the apex trade body All India Gem and Jewellery Domestic Council (GJC) has appealed to the central government to review and withdraw the fee escalation. GJC Chairman Rajesh Rokde underscored that with mandatory hallmarking expanding across 380 districts and surpassing 600 million HUID-stamped articles between July 2021 and March 2026, massive operational scale should have resulted in cost efficiencies rather than hefty tariff increases.The council asserted that while the gems and jewelry fraternity fully endorses mandatory hallmarking for consumer purity and trade transparency, regulatory authorities must prioritize strict enforcement against unauthorized hallmarking centers, fraudulent stamps, and unregistered inventory rather than penalizing legitimate trade and end consumers.