SJM welcomes Centre's decision restricting e-commerce players from supplying non-essential items

RSS-affiliated Swadeshi Jagran Manch on Monday welcomed the Centre's decision to allow e-commerce players to supply only essential items during lockdown and not non-essential items, saying it would have given them an unfair advantage.

"SJM firmly believes that this exemption would have led to a non-level playing field for offline retailers. This would not only have been unfair to the local retailers, but would have given unfair advantage to the giant e-commerce players," the Sangh's economic wing said in a statement.

At the same time, the SJM said grocery stores or local kirana traders did exemplary work by ensuring the supplies of essential items, but also shown maturity in maintaining social distancing and hygiene.

The SJM, which has been critical of FDI, welcomed the amendment in its norms to make it mandatory that investments from China will now require a clearance from the Centre.

It also demanded that similar provisions must be added to the Chinese investments coming from other shores like Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore etc. SJM also welcomed the "crackdown" on Zoom and said it wanted a similar action against other China-based apps such as TikTok.

The Home Ministry's Cyber Coordination Centre has issued an advisory saying that Zoom is not a safe platform.