Cloth Merchants have planned 3-day nationwide strike against GST beginning 27th June 2017 (Tuesday). The strike is against 5% GST (Goods and Service Tax) being levied on the sector. Textile traders across Ahmedabad, Surat, and Jaipur have decided to shut shop between June 27 and 29.

“Traders of Surat have re-opened their establishments but will close it for three days tomorrow (Tuesday) onwards. Our bandh call has been supported by traders from across the country,” said Tarachand Kasat, president of All India Textile Traders’ Association. “If the government does not find an amicable solution to our problems in the next GST Council meet, we may call an indefinite strike 1 July onwards.” as reported by livemint.

Textile traders claim that the sector is unorganized and there are plenty of traders and workers who do not have computers and also required knowledge to implement and comply with the new law.

"To comply with GST rules, one has to have a computer. In textile business, only 11 per cent of the shops across the country possess computers and the remaining do not have computers or any knowledge of computers. Along with unskilled workers, even they will not be able to comply with the GST formalities," added Srikanth, secretary, Secunderabad Cloth Merchants Association.

The protest is also expected to envelop Mumbai, Kolkata and other major cloth manufacturing and trading centers. Wholesalers, traders, angadiyas, transporters, courier companies exclusively working for cloth deliveries etc are also expected to join the protest.

Traders demand one-year exemption from the tax so that they can prepare themselves to face the new burden.

However, organized players are not participating in the protest, because they have necessary know-how and resources available at disposal to deal with the upcoming new set of compliances.
"We want GST to be implemented and hence we don't support the protest called by the cloth merchants," said Rahul Mehta, president, Clothing Manufacturers Association of India (CMAI).