NEW DELHI: Official reports said one person was killed’ when police opened fire on rampaging: crowds of strikers. The All India Motor Transport Congress (AIMTC) claimed the toll was two. The AIMTC appealed to the truckers to maintain calm and not to be provoked “by the highhandedness of the authorities.”
Talks between the AIMTC and Surface Transport Minister Jagdish Tytler were bogged down in irreconcilable positions of the two— the government asking for an unconditional withdrawal of the strike and the strikers insisting the contentious composite fee be first reduced to Rs 1500.
The Indian Merchants’ Chamber (IMC) in Bombay has urged Prime Minister P.V.Narasimha Rao to initiate necessary action to end the truckers’ strike, which had paralyzed the entire economic activity.
In a communication to Rao, the IMC president Harsh Goenka said the strike was affecting industrial production because of stoppage of supplies of raw materials and Trans port of finished goods to the consuming centers,
The Prime Minister’s intervention was urgently solicited by the business community, which had been put to unnecessary harassment and hardship, Goenka said in his letter, copies of which were sent also to Tytler and Pawar.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 1, 1993
