Demanding immediate withdrawal of all trade permissions granted to e-Commerce giants Amazon and Flipkart in the country, the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM) demanded the Government of India to conduct a high-level probe by CBI into their corrupt and irregular trade practices.
This was demanded in a resolution adopted at the two-day national conference of SJM, held in Gwalior of Madhya Pradesh. Incidentally, SJM came out with such a demand three months after prominent Hindi Weekly Panchjanya accused Amazon of resorting to corrupt practices and promoting Christianity in the country.
The resolution named ‘Withdraw Permissions to Amazon, FlipKart-Walmart to Operate in Bharat’, SJM also demanded the government to declare all their trade activities as illegal. It also asked the government toon leave all government officials, including sitting in the high offices, who are directly or indirectly facilitating these companies for their illegal operation, so that ensure fair and impartial probe by CBI into the whole matter, so as to punish for their offenses,
It may be recalled that in September, carrying out a cover story, Panchajanya had equated the retail giant Amazon with the East India Company, accusing of resorting to corrupt practices and also alleging of assaulting Hindu values, through Prime Videos. The Cover story also accused that the company of allegedly being involved in “Chritianising” India and funding two Christian organizations.
SJM alleged that multinational e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Walmart/Flipkart are blatantly contravening and operating uncontrolled in India. It may be recalled that Amazon and Flipkart hold 80 per cent of online space in the country.
SJM deplored that discounts offered by them are adversely impacting offline markets also. They are luring customers by offering high discounts, advertising aggressively to communicate such offers to the general public.
Public is attracted to them more for discounts than convenience. This trend is adversely impacting the neighbourhood shops and kirana stores, it added.
SJM also alleged that this multinational e-Commerce company is resorting to various corrupt practices. According to SJM, Amazon has hired many law firms for its legal business activities and pays huge legal fees to these law companies.
After that these companies transfer that fee to some other company and after that a link is formed and finally the final legal company or lawyer or any professional withdraws the amount in cash to the concerned official, it added.
The SJM resolution asserted that all licenses and permissions obtained by such companies were obtained fraudulently using unfair means. It further said that there has been a demand for a long time that e-commerce companies be compelled to audit their financial documents and make them public. But, it deplored that these companies avoided making their documents public.
SJM said that Amazon gave preferential treatment to a select group of sellers, including Cloudtail and Appario, bypassing Indian FDI Regulations and scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competitive products and brands such as Solimo and Amazon Basics.
SJM warned that Amazon in India has become so powerful that it can pick winners or losers, destroy small businesses, raise prices on consumers and put employees out of work. According to SJM, for every job that Amazon creates it destroys ten others.
Amazon meets with startups with proposals to invest, then launches competing products that are highly detrimental to growth of the startups as well as the culture of entrepreneurship in the country, it added.
SJM deplored that Amazon is on a spree to acquire brick and mortar retail outlets along with its e-commerce retail activities. Its investment in Shoppers Stop and More retail chain are some major steps in this direction.
