The Dehradun mayor Sunil Uniyal ‘Gama’ deferred imposition of the license fee proposed for traders of the city after they protested in Municipal Corporation of Dehradun (MCD).
On Monday, the members of the business fraternity staged a protest in MCD outside the office of the mayor. According to them, the license fee is a means of exploiting small businessmen who are already going through a loss in the market. “I have a clothing store in Paltan bazaar but for the past three years, my business is going down due to the huge online market presence.
It has made our lives miserable and if we’ll have to pay the license fee to MCD then what will we do? We already pay other taxes imposed by the government. We hope the mayor will understand our difficulties as he has been a businessman too before being the mayor of the city,” said Ankush Jain, a trader from Paltan Bazaar.
According to Ranbir Singh Chaudhary, president of Doon Real Estate Association, “Our business is already going through financial crisis and license fee by MCD will make it worse. Our work has also provided employment to many unemployed and those with limited education but each and every individual is going through a crisis, therefore, we decided to request mayor to take the proposal of license fee back.”
While speaking to the protestors the mayor said that it has already been made clear that no decision will be taken without considering the interests of traders and others. He said that the protest staged by them was not really required. Everyone is welcome to submit objections and MCD will surely consider it. He also added that the proposal was not personally taken up by him but was first passed in the board meeting, and besides license fee proposal is also in progress in other cities of the state too, said the mayor.However, the protestors said that they want confirmation and not assurance from the mayor, therefore on the insistence, the mayor decided to defer the imposition of the license fee proposal in the presence of BJP State general secretary Anil Goyal.
With this announcement, most of the traders were happy but some of them expressed concern stating that the MCD might change its decision in the future. According to Shriram Gupta, a trader from Rajpur, “I don’t think that this is any kind of confirmation that traders will not have to pay the license fee in the near future. It feels like this is just a temporary arrangement but let’s see and hope for the good.”
