Five thousand textile shops and hundreds of powerlooms remained closed in Erode on Thursday, demanding exemption of textiles from GST and service tax.
The Erode Cloth Merchants Association called the one-day strike. All textile shops, cloth bleaching and dyeing units, wholesale textile markets and powerloom units in Erode remained closed. Some mill goods selling textile retail shops remained open.
R Ravichandran, president of the association, urged the Centre to exempt the textile items under Chapter 52 of Central Excise Tariff from the GST fully. They also wanted exemption to powerloom-made cotton home textiles such as bedspreads, bedsheets etc.