NEW DELHI: The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) on Wednesday said it will launch a 90-day nationwide agitation against the Walmart-Flipkart deal, from September 15 in New Delhi. The association has also called for a ‘Bharat Trade Bandh’ on September 28.
CAIT has so far knocked every door to stop the e-commerce deal, but seen no success. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has already cleared Walmart’s 77 per cent acquisition of Flipkart. The traders’ body has recently filed a petition in National Company Law Appellate Tribunal against CCI’s decision.
The traders have also written to the government to stop the acquisition as it feels that the move would promote malpractices such as predatory pricing, deep discounting and loss funding.
Praveen Khandelwal, CAIT secretary general, claimed that at a time when there is no e-commerce policy, it would be a cake walk for Walmart to circumvent the FDI policy Press Note No 3 of 2016. Note 3 says no to deep discounting and inventory ownership directly or indirectly by e-commerce markets.