The amendment has been sought as the 1983 Act was vague and did not differentiate between wholesale and retail trades. This led the law enforcement authorities to force shifting of even retail businesses to the new site.

Trading circles feel that only the wholesale traders should be shifted to Kalamboli and not the retail trade. The wholesale merchants on its part shifted and occupied allotted government plots after investing huge sums there. However, the industry was caught unawares when the state government made delay in providing basic infrastructure facilities after taking initiatives. The shifting has subsequently come to a standstill in late eighties and part of the wholesale trade is still operating from the earliersite at Darukhana and Carnac Bunder near South Mumbai.

"The authorities should have prepared basic infrastructure and then told the industry to shift," says Himatlal D Sheth, president of the Darukhana Iron Steel and Scrap Merchants' Association. The Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB), Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA) and City Industrial Development Corporation (Cidco) were waiting with their own list of charges and the cost involved totalled a whopping Rs 25 crore--all to be borne by the traders. Traders have also sought state government's intervention to provide basic amenities at the Kalamboli, the site where the scrap market is being shifted.

The industry was allotted plots at Kalamboli and investment by retailers and wholesale merchants have run into crores of rupees but traders are upset over the state's move to charge higher market fees. The industry is already limping under recession and will be wiped out if the present scenario continues, trading circlesopine.

The state, in a bid to decongest the city, set up one of the country's largest warehousing complexes for iron and steel trade in Navi Mumbai at Kalamboli. The industry, concentrated in Darukhana and Carnac Bunder and has 2000 traders doing business, was told to move to the Kalamboli in 1983. Subsequently, Cidco was entrusted with the development of the infrastructure in the area. Another leading player in the project was MMRDA.

"The industry was not in a position to bear any more costs and it was just floating, unable to bear the onslaught of recession and other problems," Sheth says.

However, the government issued a notification for compulsory shifting of the traders to Kalamboli in 1987. "It was originally meant to be a voluntary shifting which the industry accepted," Sheth says. The notification was challenged in Mumbai high court which ruled that the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Specified Commodities Markets Act, 1983 suffers from lack of clarity in its definition of the trade. "Retail tradecannot be shifted and only wholesale will move there. We have submitted our formulae on the generic term, `iron and steel' as well," he said.

Further, the agreement of lease had a clause that the development of the plots should be completed within three years and that plot holders should form a co-operative society to run their own affairs. However, through a total volte-face, the market committee was foisted upon the traders, courtesy the new act. But today, the market committee has been reduced to a mere spectator and it has become the domain of state government bureaucrats.

Infrastructure at Kalamboli is in a bad shape. roads are no longer usable and water logging is a common site at the plots during monsoon. Cidco has not handed over the residential flats to the traders. "It was a total harassment by the state authorities," Himatlal Sheth says. Eventually the shifting came to a halt. The local authorities was quick to act as they stopped vehicles carrying iron and steel from entering the city. Butrelief came from the chief minister Manohar Joshi, who stayed the order. "He was receptive to our problems and suggested that shifting should be organised in a phased manner only after the infrastructure is in place," Sheth said.

The industry has demanded that the cost of developing infrastructure, pegged at Rs 25 crore, should come as a grant. However, government is again non-committal.

The MMRDA's quick fix solution was to hike the present market fees by at least five times from the present Rs 1 lakh, which the traders have rejected outright.

"The traders are already burdened with charges like market fee and Cidco service charges and any hike in these will only add to their difficulty," argues Sheth.

Another major impediment is the high handling charges fixed time and again by the Mumbai Iron and Steel Labour Board.

"The board's way of linking charges with cost of living index and then revising upwards has cast heavy burden on traders whose margins are shrinking," says Sheth. The trade in Mumabi,says Sheth, is becoming less competitive as high labour charges are forcing costs to soar. Interestingly, it seems that the board's writ runs only in Darukhana and Carnac Bunder as handling charges are varied in other parts of Mumbai.

"It is an irony that the traders are forced to pay high fees even after they were compulsorily shifted there," Sheth said.