Police lathi-charge protesting jewellers in Gujarat

Gujarat-based gems and jewellery traders, who are on strike to protest against excise duty on unbranded gold jewellery, were on Tuesday baton-charged here when they tried to block traffic on busy Sarkhej-Gandhinagar highway, police said.

The jewellers also held protests and blocked traffic in major cities like Vadodara, Surat, Rajkot and Ahmedabad.

In Ahmedabad, the agitators who tried to block traffic on SG Highway as part of their 'chhaka Jam' programme were baton-charged by the police, as the crowd was getting violent and uncontrollable, police said.

Some persons have also been detained for manhandling the police personnel and disrupting traffic, they added.

In Rajkot and Surat too there were protests by the jewellers in the local Soni Bazars, but the demonstration was peaceful and restricted to the local market hence there was no incidents of violence, police said.

The jewellers in Gujarat are on strike since March 17 demanding rollback of 0.3% excise duty levied on unbranded golden jewellery and making PAN submission mandatory on gold purchases of above Rs2 lakh, as announced in the budget 2012-13.

Around 66,000 retail jewellers, four lakh jewellery makers, 1.5 lakh salesman at showrooms, have been impacted in the state by the strike. The losses are pegged over Rs20,000 crore so far, said a member of Ahmedabad Jewellers Association.