By IANS,
New Delhi : The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), one of the biggest grouping of Indian traders Thursday termed the nationwide strike to protest the government’s new economic measures as “very successful” and claimed that an estimated 50 million shopkeepers across India had participated in it.
“The strike was very successful,” Praveen Khandelwal, CAIT national secretary general told IANS.
“All our 25,000 trade associations had called the strike and all traders participated in it,” Khandelwal said.
According to Khandelwal, the 7 lakh shopkeepers in Delhi had kept their shutters down. “We have five crore (50 million) shopkeepers across India, and all kept their shutters closed,” he said.
Asked if the shopkeepers were unanimous in wanting to observe the shutdown, Khandelwal said they had asked traders in small markets to down their shutters.
“We asked them to close down… all kept closed,” he added.
The CAIT had invited prominent political leaders supporting the strike to Jantar Mantar.
“At the Jantar Mantar, all parties came together and joined traders. We were on the same platform together, This is for the first time after the Emergency that such a thing happened,” Khandelwal said.