Regularize commercial establishments, freehold industrial land: Sham Langar   

Jammu: Sham Lal Langer, Convener, Industries & Trade Cell, BJP, J&K on Thursday urged the government to regularize the commercial establishments which have seen mushroom growth in the last couple of decades and free hold industrial land to bring in life to local industry. In a statement issued here, the BJP leader raised serious concern over the problems being faced by traders of Jammu and Kashmir due to failure of successive governments of erstwhile State in resolving their issues. He said that regularization of existing commercial establishments has lately turned out to be the matter of life and death for the trader fraternity of J&K. Taking specific case of posh Gandhi Nagar locality, he said that since its inception in 1964, the Gandhi Nagar and several other markets were planned keeping in mind population of that time where even a handful of shops can easily catered to the needs of the people. “However, with changing times, more and more shops came into existence and Jammu City became the hub of businesses, contributing greatly to the economy of the erstwhile State. Now after the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A, the traders of Jammu and Kashmir have been hit hard and the time demands that their business establishments should be regularized by imposing nominal fee making it easy for the trader fraternity to continue with their daily chores of business”, he said and added that besides this opportunity, the traders should also be granted all the facilities being offered to their counterparts in other UTs of the country.Sham Langar also very vociferously raised the issue of industry unit holders demanding from the government a sop with regard to free holding industrial unit land chunks. He said local industry has contributed significantly in boosting economy of J&K besides generated lakhs of employment avenues therefore government should take care of this sector by free holding industrial land by way of charging nominal fee since this process of regularization will reinvigorate this sector considerably giving the much desired push to economy which faced difficult time due to onslaught of coronavirus.  He said that both these decisions will ensure a win-win situation for the government, traders, industrialists and the workers along with their families associated with the concerned businesses. Besides, the government should also make a single window system so that the traders may not face any issue while establishing a new venture, he added.