Carat392 districts, 26 of 36 states: where India's hallmark law now reaches
The Third Amendment Order, issued 3 August, adds 12 districts to mandatory gold hallmarking, taking the count from 380 to 392 across 26 states and union territories. This paper had not carried it. It is 28 days old.
§1Twelve districts, nine states, one order.
India's Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution issued the Hallmarking of Gold Jewellery and Gold Artefacts (Third Amendment) Order, 2026 on 3 August, on the advice of the Bureau of Indian Standards and under the Bureau of Indian Standards Act, 2016. It adds twelve districts to the mandatory hallmarking regime, taking the total from 380 to 392. The twelve are Kokrajhar and Lakhimpur in Assam, Panipat in Haryana, Bhind, Khandwa and Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, Bhandara in Maharashtra, Angul in Odisha, Kotputli-Behror in Rajasthan, Kancheepuram in Tamil Nadu, Udham Singh Nagar in Uttarakhand and Jhargram in West Bengal.
§2Why a 28-day-old rule appears in today's paper.
This item is being carried here for a reason that should be stated rather than disguised. It is 28 days old. It was reported in the Indian trade and financial press on 10 and 11 August and this paper did not carry it, and nothing about it is new today. It is printed because it is a rule in force that binds jewellers in twelve named districts and because a paper's archive is only useful if the live regulations are actually in it. It is not printed as news, and it will not be run again.
§3The coverage arithmetic, and the denominator this desk will not print.
The coverage arithmetic is the part that has not been published clearly anywhere this desk could find. The revised annexure covers 392 districts across 26 states and union territories. India has 36 states and union territories in total, so the regime now reaches 72.22% of them by that count. The district-level denominator is less useful than it looks: published totals for the number of districts in India currently range from 784 to about 802 depending on the source and the date, because states create and redraw districts continuously, and this desk will not print a percentage built on a denominator it cannot pin down. States and union territories is the firm measure, and 26 of 36 is the firm figure.
§4The mechanism matters more than the map.
The mechanism matters more than the map for anyone trading into these districts. Mandatory hallmarking means a jeweller in a covered district may not sell gold jewellery or artefacts without a BIS hallmark carrying the six-digit alphanumeric HUID, and registration with BIS is the precondition for doing so. The order is the third amendment of 2026, following one on 28 April, to a parent order that dates from 15 January 2020. The pattern is a steady district-by-district widening rather than a national switch-on, which means the compliance question for a multi-state retailer is not whether the rule applies but in which of its shops it applies this month.
The twelve names are the whole content of this order and most coverage of it led with the number 392 instead. A jeweller in Panipat or Angul or Kancheepuram has a registration to complete and a stock of unhallmarked pieces to deal with, and a jeweller three districts over has neither.
Read the list, not the total. This paper should have carried it on 10 August and did not, which is why it appears at the bottom of today's edition rather than anywhere near the top.
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