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Pune traders allege bias, firm on violating deadline from Aug 4
Pune: Hundreds of traders and hoteliers in Pune held ‘Ghanta Nad’(Bell clanging) protest on Tuesday to draw the Maharashtra government’s attention to their demand for an extension in current operation hours for shop keepers in the city following similar relief to 22 other districts in the state on the basis of their respective Covid-19 caseloads
Pune: Hundreds of traders and hoteliers in Pune held ‘Ghanta Nad’(Bell clanging) protest on Tuesday to draw the Maharashtra government’s attention to their demand for an extension in current operation hours for shop keepers in the city following similar relief to 22 other districts in the state on the basis of their respective Covid-19 caseloads.
The restriction to end operation by 4 pm between Monday and Friday was retained for all shops in Pune district, inviting protests from traders, industries and restaurants in the city.
“Covid cases have gone down in Pune city and yet shop timings continue to be up to 4pm. To oppose this biased decision by the state government, all our association members and traders across the city protested today while planning to keep the shops open till 7 pm from tomorrow,” said Fatechand Ranka, president of Federation of Trade Association of Pune (FTAP).
Pune city’s positivity rate for the week ending August 1 has been 3.3%, which is less than average positivity rate of Maharashtra.
The business community wants Pune, Pimpri Chinchwad municipal limits and rural parts of districts to be assessed as separate administrative units to decide their grade of relaxation citing lower Covid positivity rates. Maharashtra government on Monday left out 11 districts including Kolhapur, Sangli, Satara, Pune, Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg, Solapur, Ahmednagar, Beed, Raigad, and Palghar from the ambit of relaxations citing their high Covid-19 caseload. Maharashtra recorded 4,869 fresh cases on Monday, taking its tally to 6,315,063 including 75,303 active cases.
The association says it has reasons to allege bias claiming the new relaxations allow all essential and non-essential shops to remain open till 10 pm in Mumbai and 8 pm in other districts. They say that while the state government allowed the civic bodies to take the final call on easing of restrictions in Mumbai city, suburban areas and Thane, Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad were denied any relief.
At around 11.45 am several traders gathered near Sonya Maruti Chowk on Laxmi Road in Pune city before marching towards Alka Talkies Chowk while beating kitchen utensils and Bells. Similarly, other shop owners, traders and their local unions across the city protested in front of their shops.
Ranka accused Uddhav Thackeray government of “favouring” Mumbai since the Shiv Sena controls the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).
“Shiv Sena government has given relaxations to Mumbai just because it is in power in the BMC. But in Pune, another political party is in power so they are not giving any relaxations to Pune. We have decided to keep our shops open from tomorrow up to 7 pm and [are] ready to face any action taken by the police or government authorities,” said Ranka, referring to the fact that the Bharatiya Janata Party runs the Pune corporation.
When asked about allegations by traders Maharashtra minister for minority affairs Nawab Malik said in Mumbai that government decided to relax curbs in Mumbai because positivitu rate there was less than 1%. “Tomorrow if Pune’s cases come down, government will immediately ease restrictions,” said Malik.
