Himachal Pradesh Veopar Mandal opposes nod to outsiders to hold trade fairs

NURPUR, July 25

Advertisement

Up in arms against local administrations granting permission to outsiders for holding exhibitions-cum-trade fairs for selling poor quality of products in the state, the Himachal Pradesh Veopar Mandal has appealed to Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur to intervene and issue directives in this connection to the district as well as sub divisional level administrations.

Peeved, Sumesh Sharma, state president of the Veopar Mandal, said the trading community had already suffered huge financial losses during the first and second Covid pandemic waves. Now granting permission to some outsiders to sell their sub-standard consumer items would ruin small shopkeepers and vendors.

‘Sub-standard products being sold’

The traders of the state are paying GST to the state exchequer, shop rents and salaries to the workers, but outsiders in the name of trade fair are selling sub-standard products. —Sumesh Sharma, Veopar mandal chief

He said as many as 600 shopkeepers of Jogindernagar in Mandi district had been holding protest demonstrations for the past few days against the local administration for granting permission for organizing a trade fair to sell consumer items.

He urged the Chief Minister to issue instructions to the Deputy Commissioners and Sub Divisional Magistrates across the state to stop granting such permissions, henceforth.

The Veopar Mandal president underlined the need of granting local gram panchayat pradhan’s permission to the hawkers (pheriwale) coming from other states for selling door-to-door consumer items in rural areas in the state. He said unknown people who thronged daily in the rural areas in the state under the pretext of selling consumer products could endanger locals’ security and also result in thefts. — OC