Onion strike withdrawn after Sheila Dikshit?s assurance

Onion traders on Wednesday called off their strike in the national capital after getting assurance from Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit that there will be no more raids by Income Tax officials, who uncovered cartels in onion trade in different parts of the country.

Dikshit called an emergency meeting with onion vendors, hours after they shut trading.

?We have decided to withdraw the strike after meeting the CM,? Rajinder Chaudhary, Secretary of Azadpur Vegetable Market Association, told reporters here.

?The Chief Minister told us that she will look into our grievance, specially the harassment meted out by the Income Tax officials during the raids conducted at our premises,? he said.

Chaudhary said prices of onions will decline within the next few days.

“Prices of onions will come down within next two-three days, as arrivals have increased in the wholesale market,” he said.

Meanwhile, Dikshit said she will write to Income Tax (I-T) officials so that the onion traders are not ?harassed? further.

“The traders came to me to announce that they have decided that they will withdraw the strike at this very moment and said in the next two-three days prices of onions will come down quite substantially because the crop which comes around this time in January will be arriving,” the CM said.

?The only assurance that I have given them is that I will write to the local I-T authorities saying that there seems to be cases of harassment of traders,? said Dikshit.

Earlier the day, the auction of the commodity in Delhi’s Azadpur market did not take place, drying up the supply line of onions, being sold at an average Rs 60 to Rs 70 a kilo across the country.

An average 800 to 1000 tonnes of the commodity are traded daily at Azadpur market.

The onions now available in the market are of old stocks, said a retailer, who stopped selling for few days after his commodity perished.

The Union government also failed to rein in the skyrocketing prices of garlic, which was sold Rs 300 a kilo.

IT department sources said existence of cartels in onion trade across Maharashtra, Punjab and Haryana came into light during raids conducted last week.

The department has appraised the Finance Ministry of its findings.

The tax raids were conducted in Maharashtra, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir, Gujarat and the city of Mumbai.

Onion prices have come down by 15 to 31 per cent in those places after the raids.