Jewellers in the national capital has on today temporarily called off their 42-day strike, demanding rollback of proposed excise duty on non-silver jewellery. "We have decided to temporarily call off the strike till April 24 after the government's assurance," Surinder Kumar Jain, Vice-President of All India Sarafa Association said.

"If the government does not consider our demand of rolling back its decision of imposing 1 per cent excise duty, we will resume our strike from April 25," said Ram Avtar Verma President of Bullion and Jewellery Association.

"Strike has been called off temporarily because of Akshay Tritiya," Rajesh Mehta, chairman, Rajesh Exports, said.

"Large corporations like Titan can deal with the documentation, but small corporations should be given some time, on the ground the implementation has to be done in a sensitive and a friendly manner," says Bhasker Bhat, MD at Titan.

"Another agreement took place on 19th march that no excise officers will come into the offices of the manufacturer or the retailer, VAT records or the BIS hallmarking records would be accepted as sales and no separate declaration would be made for the excise purpose," Sanjeev Agarwal, CEO, Gitanjali Exports Corporation, said.

Although the industry is not happy that the excise duty has not been rolled back, Sanjeev Agarwal, chief of Gitanjali Export Corporation, is relieved that jewellers are back in business.

"We are meeting the Union Minister Piyush Goyal tomorrow in Delhi with our demands, which include paying additional 1% additional tax on VAT instead of excise duty, no maintenance of extra register keeping details of each items, no additional tax on remake of old jewellery and no inspection of manufacturing and retail units. For this we have temporarily halted the strike in the state from April 14 to 24," said Maharashtra Rajya Saraf Suvarnakar Federation President Fatechand Ranka.

By Premji