New Delhi, 20 Oct (KNN) The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) approached the Union Health Minister, Mansukh Mandaviya setting out their resentment towards an advertisement campaign of the health ministry urging the people to shop online for protection from Covid.

The CAIT while registering its strong protest on this particular advertisement has called upon Health Minister Mandaviya to immediately withdraw the said advertisement and suspend its promotion any further.

“The said advertisement campaign is grossly against more than 8 crore small businesses of the Country who are rendering yeomen services at the time of need of the nation and contravenes the fundamental right enshrined in the Constitution of India which prohibits any discrimination,” said the CAIT.

CAIT National President B.C.Bhartia and Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal in the communication said to the Health Minister Mandaviya that the current online business of India is highly vitiated and captivated by foreign funded e-commerce companies which have left no stone unturned in disobeying the laws and the rules of the Country and abusing the dominance.

The said campaign of the Health Ministry is regarded as a vital support and empowering the global e-commerce companies to continue with their unhealthy and manipulative business practices much to the disadvantage to not only the traders but the end consumers as well.

The Confederation is of that the opinion that while drafting the campaign, these issues were ignored such a move by Health Ministry is highly derogatory, proved to be much disastrous to the offline business community and an attempt to discourage the retailers of the Country.

“The offline traders who stood firmly with the Government at the time of covid both last year and this year have been grossly ignored and neglected by the officials who designed the campaign-lamented both leaders,” stated CAIT.

Bhartia & Khandelwal said that at the time when much controversy is erupting about e-commerce business, strong remarks passed by the Supreme Court and Karnataka High Court about the business tactics of major global e-tailers who have the highest share of e-commerce business in India, several statements made by Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal at various national & international forums about mandated compliance of the laws and rules have been put to deaf ears to by major e-tailers who  are controlling the e-commerce business,  the campaign of health ministry asking people to buy goods from online is an unwanted, uncalled for and highly discriminatory campaign which rejects the contribution of offline traders in national economy and who have been regarded as backbone of economy by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.