GUWAHATI, Oct 16 - The indigenous silk artisans and loom owners of Sualkuchi are worried over the reports of huge consignments of spurious �handloom� silk products from outside the State flooding the State�s markets during this Puja season. Reports of the unscrupulous traders selling such fake handloom silk clothes as genuine Sualkuchi products are doing the rounds these days.
Sualkuchi Tat Silpa Unnayan Samiti secretary Hiralal Kalita told this newspaper that reports indicate that such fake items are now available at many showrooms owned by some unscrupulous traders in the major urban areas of the State.
The Tat Silpa Unnayan Samiti has decided to take up the issue with the State�s Handloom and Textiles Directorate with an appeal to initiate immediate steps to check sale of such fake items as genuine Sualkuchi products, Kalita said.
Moreover, Kalita said for the benefit of the common people of the State, who are fond of Sualkuchi products, the pat (mulberry silk), muga and tasar clothes produced in Sualkuchi are certified by the Silk Testing Laboratory set up at Sualkuchi on August 7, 2015, as indigenous handloom products.
The genuine Sualkuchi clothes have the seals and stickers of the laboratory fixed on them. The buyers should examine these seals and stickers while buying the silk clothes, to ascertain their genuineness. The silk clothes produced outside the State production centres can never bear such seals and stickers, Kalita said.
When contacted, highly-placed sources in the Handloom and Textiles Directorate told this correspondent that the Directorate is yet to receive any complaint from any quarter on the matter. The Directorate will go for a screening drive as soon as it receives specific complaint/complaints, or, newspaper reports in this respect, said the sources.
It needs mention here that the Sualkuchi artisans and handloom owners rose in a revolt in March-April, 2013 in protest against the practice of selling silk clothes manufactured in other States, with plagiarised Sualkuchi designs, as Sualkuchi products. Police had to resort to firing and the Kamrup district administration had to finally clamp curfew in Sualkuchi areas to quell the protest.
