New Delhi, Mar 5 (IANS): The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has prohibited sale of hallmarked gold jewellery or gold artefacts without the six-digit alphanumeric hallmark unique identification number (HUID) after March 31, 2023.

The move announced on Saturday by the government, is aimed at protecting consumers and enhancing their confidence in purchase of hallmarked gold jewellery.

Official sources said that it would ensure traceability and assure quality in gold jewellery.

Consumers can check and authenticate hallmarked gold jewellery items with HUID number using the "verify HUID" in 'BID CARE' app.

The app provides information of the jeweller who got the article hallmarked, their registration number, purity of the article, type of article as well as details of hallmarking centre which test and hallmarked the article.

Using this information a common consumer can verify the article being purchased by matching it with article type as well as it's purity.

Government at the same time has however notified that hallmarked jewellery lying with consumers as per old schemes will remain valid.

As per section 49 of BIS Rules, 2018, in case hallmarked jewellery bought by the consumer is found to be of lesser purity than that marked on the jewellery, then the buyer or customer must be entitled for compensation which will be two times the amount of difference calculated on the basis of shortage of purity for the weight of such article sold and the testing charges.