Manish Tewari, the Congress candidate from Chandigarh, on Saturday reached out to businessmen through a door-to-door campaign in the markets of Sectors 18, 19, 21 and 29.

Accompanied by the local unit president HS Lucky and other senior leaders, including former mayors Subash Chawla and Ravinder Pal Singh Pali, and former local Youth Congress chief Harmel Kesari, Tewari inquired about various issues being faced by the traders’ fraternity.

Expressing gratitude to them for a warm welcome, the senior Congress leader assured them of addressing all issues and meeting all their expectations.

Remarking on the BJP government’s performance, Tewari said, “People are well aware of the result of BJP’s promises of 2 crore jobs every year and depositing of ₹15 lakh in each individual’s bank accounts.”

“Ten years are a long time for the people to try and test someone, and the BJP government has miserably failed,” he observed, while challenging the BJP to name a single achievement during the last one decade, except for spreading lies through “jumlas”.

Traders seek inclusion of their issues in BJP manifesto

Members of the Chandigarh Beopar Mandal called on local BJP president Jatinder Pal Malhotra and party’s candidate Sanjay Tandon, seeking inclusion of their issues in the party’s manifesto for the Lok Sabha elections.

The traders submitted a detailed memorandum of their issues, including implementation of OTS Scheme for VAT assessment cases on Punjab pattern, conversion of commercial and industrial properties from leasehold to freehold at reasonable charges and rationalisation of extra coverage charges while converting an SCF to SCO.

“Also, we demanded rationalisation of penalty under building bylaws, and permission of general trade in the upper floors of commercial buildings without conversion charges,” said Charanjiv Singh, president, CBM.

Malhotra and Tandon assured the delegation that they will include traders’ issues in party’s election manifesto and try to resolve maximum issues in the next term.