The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh affiliate Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) on Tuesday has urged the Centre to immediately withdraw all permissions given to multinational e-commerce companies including Amazon and Flipkart-Walmart and declare all their activities illegal. SJM at its national convention has demanded that the entire matter should be investigated by the CBI and the government officers gaining from these companies directly or indirectly should be sent on leave to facilitate a fair investigation of the whole matter and be punished for their offences.
SJM national co-convener Dr Ashwani Mahajan said for a long time there was a demand that the e-commerce companies, which are illegally doing e-commerce business under the guise of the platform in India by giving huge discounts on the basis of foreign funds which is a cash-burning model, should be forced to audit their financial documents and make them public. However, these companies avoid making their documents public.
Further, SJM argued that Foreign Direct Investment in multi-brand retail trade is regulated through Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Policy. ‘’Foreign players cannot have inventory-based models and they are also based on influencing prices by cash-burning models. Discounts offered by them are adversely impacting offline markets also. They are luring customers by offering high discounts, advertising aggressively to communicate such offers to the general public,’’ it said.
Dr Mahajan said the public is attracted to them more for discount than the convenience and this trend is adversely impacting the neighbourhood shops and kirana stores. Along with this, people engaged in the wholesale and transport sector are also getting adversity affected by e-commerce giants.
