FJCCI members at the meeting at Chamber Bhavan in Ranchi on Sunday. Picture by Prashant Mitra

Ranchi, April 13: The business fraternity came together today to mount pressure on the state government to withdraw the Agriculture Produce Market Committee (Amendment) Bill, 2007, passed hurriedly by the Assembly on the last day of the budget session.

Today, they held a meeting at Chamber Bhavan under the aegis of Federation of Jharkhand Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FJCCI) and discussed the adverse impact of the proposed law.

“The bill would pave the path of corruption and price hike as the provision of increasing the market cess from 1 per cent to 2 per cent and issuing permits and licences for every work have been included in it. It also provides imposition of 500 per cent penalty for each human error and fee for all goods vehicles entering market areas,” former FJCCI president Arjun Jalan said.

According to a release issued by the chamber, it was wrong to make provision of market fee in the bill as 28 agriculture produce market committees have contributed Rs 116 crore as market fee in the past five years.

But the state government has spent just Rs 25.66 crore out of it on development in the period.

The chamber has urged the people of various Assembly segments to mount pressure on their local MLAs to withdraw the bill.

The traders also demanded the state government to follow its Bihar counterpart to scrap the agriculture produce market committees.