 "All India Bullion Jewellers and Swarnkar Federation members protest against the proposed hike in excise duty on jewellery at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi")
While the 43-day strike has officially been called off, a number of jewellery associations are still awaiting an official directive from their representative associations.
According to trade sources, the apex body of jewellery associations, All India Gems and Jewellery Trade Federation (GJF) has not sent any communication to its members conveying its decision to call off the strike. Consequently, its members continued to shut down their shops.
Independent jewellers in their neighbourhood, however, opened their shops which spurred members of GJF to join them without waiting an official communication from the Federation.
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"We have not received any communication from our representative body, GJF. Hence, we have not sent any communications to our members to open their shops," Lala Ashok Kumar Phophalia, General Secretary, Delhi Jewellers Association, said.
According to trade sources, some associations are of the view that they would not announce calling off their strike officially till the new session of the Parliament begins on April 24. They are awaiting Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to announce liberalisation in the policy as committed to jewellers for "no raids and no seizure of stocks".
Repeated efforts to reach GJF President G V Sreedhar and director Ashok Minawala did not elicit any response. One of GJF directors Bachhraj Bamalwa, however, confirmed having called off the strike.
"The problem was not excise duty, but its implementation. The government has assured us to come out with a liberal policy to resolve the problems to be faced by jewellers. Now, with that assurance nothing calls us for the strike to continue. We have tried convincing our jewellery fraternity with the assurance given by the government. So, jewellers have gradually started opening up their shops. We are planning to conduct a joint session of seminar on jewellers' education on excise duty implementation," said Bamalwa.
In fact, jewellers were disparately waiting for a minor commitment from the government to re-start their shops to recover some fixed costs incurred by them.
Despite assurance from the government for "no raids, no seizure" for 60 days, jewellers are worried about their business going forward. They fear the power vested with the excise inspector under the law can be utilised later.
