Mumbai retailers plan to go on strike from Monday

Retail traders in Mumbai plan to go on strike from Monday after talks held between the Federation of Association of Merchants (FAM) and chief minister Prithviraj Chavan on the issue of Local Body Tax (LBT) failed. The retailers were to go on strike from Wednesday, but have decided to advance it to Monday.

Retail traders in Mumbai plan to go on strike from Monday after talks held between the Federation of Association of Merchants (FAM) and chief minister Prithviraj Chavan on the issue of Local Body Tax (LBT) failed. The retailers were to go on strike from Wednesday, but have decided to advance it to Monday. The meeting was held at the behest of Milind Deora, minister of state (MoS) for communication and information technology.

HT Image

Viren Shah, president, Federation of Retail Traders Welfare Association, said, “As LBT is not being scrapped, we plan to go ahead with the strike from Monday. Chavan agreed to ease some rules in LBT, but traders were adamant that nothing short of scrapping it would do. The decision about the strike had been taken at the meeting held on Thursday night when around 150 retailers and area associations met at south Mumbai to discuss a further course of action.

Shah said the strike was being called after much thought, so as not to cause inconvenience to consumers. He said they had given a five-day time period to consumers to purchase commodities.