New Delhi: Trade bodies have urged political parties to release separate manifestos addressing their concerns months ahead of the general elections.
The Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CTI) has planned to hold meetings with various business groups. The aim of these consultations is to develop a 10-point agenda that reflects traders’ concerns. The Chamber intends to pass on the demands to all political parties and pledges its support to the party that includes the trade-related issues in its election manifesto.
“While various organizations have started conveying their concerns to political parties, it was decided in the series of core committee meetings that CTI will hold more than 100 meetings with traders from market associations, industry associations, transport associations etc before the elections. “The 10-point agenda will be prepared after understanding the concerns of traders. These demands will be sent to all parties,” CTI Chairman Brijesh Goyal said.
CTI president Subhash Khandelwal said that there are more than 20 lakh traders in Delhi and in such a situation there should be a separate manifesto for traders.
“They have a number of demands related to licenses, general trading conditions, GST and other norms. We want all of these questions to be taken seriously. The problems commonly faced by traders in various sectors will be part of our main demands.” “More meetings will be convened in the coming days where traders’ demands will be heard and conveyed to the parties,” he said.
Goyal said that during the meeting on Monday, the participating traders expressed demands to organize a shopping festival and develop an online e-commerce portal to enable everyone to register and display their products.
“This is in addition to resolving issues like expansion of roads, sewerage lines, CCTV cameras and removal of dangling cables,” Goyal said.
Earlier, the Delhi government had announced plans to redevelop five markets in the city under the Rozgaar Budget, but nothing significant has happened in this case.