New Delhi, (Samajweekly) In view of some scary incidents in the country’s e-commerce business in the recent past, the US giant Amazon has facilitated the sale of — marijuana illegally through its portal and banned chemicals in making bombs. And now the incident of selling poison through the e-commerce portal of Amazon has shocked the Country. Making a strong protest against such activities of the Amazon, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) Wednesday held protests in more than 1,200 cities in over 500 districts of different states of the country.
The protesters demonstrated the anger and resentment of the trading community by holding dharna and demonstration and warned Amazon that either they should make their business model according to the law and rules, otherwise prepare to tie their sack bed from India. Now the violation of laws and rules in e-commerce business will not be tolerated, CAIT said, adding that if no concrete action is taken immediately in this matter, then the traders of the country will organise — ‘Bharat Vyapar Bandh’ to raise their voice. The CAIT also said that Amazon’s love & affection towards the sale of marijuana is evident from the fact that it has asked the US government to legalise the sale of marijuana.
CAIT has demanded that the business model of Amazon and other e-commerce companies should be investigated in a time-bound manner. While like the arrest of Aryan Khan in a drug case, the Amazon officials should also be arrested in the same way and a sedition case should be registered against Amazon for facilitating the sale of chemicals in the Pulwama attack.
CAIT has also said that since this issue has taken an inter-state shape, the Union Government should depute its agencies to investigate the case in a time-bound period and the guilty persons should be punished as per the law and till then the operations of Amazon portal should be kept suspended.
CAIT National President B.C. Bhartia and Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said that according to the information received on Tuesday, a person in Indore city of Madhya Pradesh lodged a complaint against Amazon to the Indore Collector in MP stating that his son had three months ago ordered poison through Amazon which was made available he committed suicide.
Prior to that the MP Police seized 21 kg and 17 kg of marijuana through two different operations whereas on the information of MP Police, the Vishakhapatnam police has also seized 48 kg of marijuana facilitated by a sale through Amazon portal. It is very surprising that in 2019, through Amazon’s portal, the sale of the chemical of the bombs used in the Pulwama terror attack, including the banned chemical, was also facilitated through Amazon’s e-commerce portal but so far no action has been taken against Amazon officials, CAIT said.
Bhartia and Khandelwal said that illegal activities are going on such a large-scale, but till now everyone is sleeping which poses a big question on the functioning of the Governments and the administrative system. It appears that for the mighty and the big companies the rules are different and for an ordinary people, the law is different. These companies are having some sort of protection from the political fraternity.
Bhartia and Khandelwal said that these incidents are not new as the CAIT and others have been making complaints against the misdeeds of big e-commerce companies since 2016, but no concrete action has been taken so far. It is highly regrettable that this sensitive issue has been in the headlines since last one week, but no statement has come from the Central Government or State Governments except Madhya Pradesh Government though the retail trade falls under the domain of State Governments.
There is tremendous anger and resentment among the traders of the country regarding this discrimination and if the government does not act now and prompt action is not taken, then the traders of the traders will be forced to call for a nationwide movement, CAIT said.
