Jewellers hold demonstration in Kanpur against excise duty

Jewellers today held demonstration at Bada Chauraha here to protest imposition of one per cent excise duty on non-silver jewellery.
The demonstration held under the banner of Uttar Pradesh Sarafa Association.
"Around five lakh jewellers including 10,000 from Kanpur have been on strike since March 2, 2016. Thousands of wholesale and retail markets are closed," Uttar Pradesh Sarafa Association President Mahesh Chandra Jain said.
"We are more concerned about employees, daily wages workers and small scale traders. They have the crisis of bread and butter now", Jain told PTI.
"We will not call off our strike till the government rolls back proposal of 1 per cent excise duty on non-silver jewellery," he said claiming traders are suffering losses of crores of rupees due to ongoing strike.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the Budget 2016-17 proposed one per cent excise duty on jewellery without input credit, or 12.5 per cent with input tax credit, on jewellery, excluding silver other than studded with diamonds and some other precious stones.