Panel’s suggestion to lift ‘shahtoosh’ ban welcomed

Srinagar, April 17

The Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCC&I) today welcomed the recommendations of a parliamentary panel regarding lifting the ban on the trade of ‘shahtoosh’, a type of shawl.

“The recommendations made by the panel have raised hopes of a large number of people connected with the trade who had been deprived of their source of their sustenance due to the ban on shahtoosh processing and trade,” KCC&I president Mushtaq Ahmad Wani said in a statement.

Quoting media reports of the recommendations made by a panel led by Congress MP Renuka Chowdhury, Wani urged the Government of India to accept the recommendations given by the panel so as to help the shahtoosh business carry on as it was before the ban. Pertinently, shahtoosh is a name given to a shawl that is woven with the down hair of the Tibetan antelope called ‘chiru’.

Wani said the industry had for long been pleading with the Central government to lift the ban on shahtoosh that was impacting the livelihood of thousands of artisans and weavers in the Valley.