BHOPAL: A day after the Home minister assured that market in the capital city will be remain open five days a week, the shops on Friday opened as per the old number and cluster pattern. Since no formal order was issued by administration on Friday, the traders opened their shops as per the old cluster system. The traders said that in absence of any official order they cannot take the risk of opening their establishment as it might invite a penalty.
The home minister Narottam Mishra, on Thursday night had stated that the traders will now be allowed to run their business from Monday through Friday, while market will remain closed on Saturday and Sunday.
The traders while thanked the minister for accepting ‘genuine’ demand, they criticised the administration for frequently changing their stand and adopting different yard stick for different markets--Bairagarh, Old City and New Market.
The traders said that the new system is likely to come in force from Monday. New Market traders’ association general secretary Ajay Dewnani said, “We did not get any order regarding 5-day plan so we continued with the cluster system which was introduced earlier. All traders have welcomed the new 5-day plan.”
The traders had earlier called on the home minister expressing their displeasure over the category based and then number based system introduced for opening the market.
Citing the example of the Bairagarh, where the shops were permitted to operate five days and later that of mall which remains open throughout the week, the traders have demanded that they too be given 5 days to run their business which has suffered hit due to lockdown.
District administration had initially introduced cluster -based plan and seeing the rush in the market it was changed to number system, wherein numbers were allotted to shops.
