January 12, 2011 5:51 PM

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Onion traders in Delhi call off strike after talks with CM

In a major relief to common man, Delhi onion traders today called off their strike after a meeting with Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit during which they were assured of not being harassed.Talking to reporters after the meeting, Rajinder Chaudhary, Secretary Azadpur Vegetable Market Association said that government will look into their grievance, specially the harassment meted out by the Income Tax officials during the raids conducted at our premises.He said the Chief Minister told the traders that she will write to the Central government in this regard.Onion traders in Azadpur mandi, the wholesale fruit and vegetable market had gone on an indefinite strike to protest the Income Tax Department's raids on them.The Delhi government had on Tuesday threatened to invoke the Essential Service Maintenance Act (ESMA) against onion traders in Asia's biggest wholesale vegetable market if necessary.Meanwhile, amid protests from vegetable merchants over tax raids, the I-T department has unearthed unaccounted money worth over 7 crore rupees from Punjab-based wholesale vegetable merchants.The money was unearthed by the authorities during a survey conducted last week to check commodity hoarding in the wake of soaring onion prices. This was disclosed by the Income Tax (Investigation wing), Additional Director, BK Singh in Chandigarh.The I-T sleuths unearthed a whopping 4.25 crore rupees as undisclosed money from a single vegetable merchant in Amritsar while 1.25 crore from Ludhiana-based traders and 1.75 crore from Jalandhar based traders.The department is still investigating the records of wholesale traders to ascertain the mismatch between physical stocks of goods and stocks maintained in accounts books.Income Tax department swooped down on vegetable merchants in Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Faridabad and Jammu and Kashmir simultaneously on the sixth of this month.

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