Police have reportedly booked 22 Kanpur traders who put up hoardings and posters comparing Prime Minister Narendra Modi with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in a bid to draw attention to an excess of coin currency on their hands.
The police have arrested Praveen Kumar for installing the hoardings and said others would be arrested soon.
Small traders in the city say that their businesses are floundering, as they are unable to exchange coins worth lakhs of rupees for notes with Kanpur banks, who say they do not have chests to store them.
The hoardings, which came up on Wednesday morning, have Kim Jong-un on one side saying he will rest only after he has destroyed the world and Modi on the other saying, "I will bring an end to businesses," the Hindustan Times reported late Friday.
Wholesale grocery traders have coins worth Rs 10 to 15 lakh each, while retailers have a stock of coins worth Rs 6-7 lakh each, on an average.
The excess of coins has forced traders to pay salaries to their employees with them, and they are in turn unable to use the money as banks and shopkeepers do not accept them, the newspaper said.
“We all are Modi supporters. If the change (coins) is ruining us and our businesses what option did we have,” Raju Khanna, a trade association leader who was among those booked, told the newspaper.
Kanpur traders, who have decided not to celebrate Diwali, have been reportedly agitating for about seven months. Their next agitation could involve dumping coins en masse at Gandhi state in Phool Bagh, the newspaper quoted Gopal Sardana, president of Kirana Vyapar Mandal, as saying.
On approaching BJP's Kanpur president Surendra Maithani, he told the newspaper that the traders should have gone to public representatives instead of attacking the PM "in the worst possible way."