Over 200 florists of Dhanbad are facing the repercussions of cancellation of marriages and suspension of train operations that has affected the supply chain from Howrah.

Many flower retailers have been compelled to shift to selling vegetables due to their debts increasing day by day since last year.

Talking to The Telegraph Online, a flower wholesaler, Dinesh Kumar said, “Having faced one of the worst times last year we were hoping to compensate for the losses this year with bumper lagan (marriage) season with over 30 thousand marriages scheduled between April and July for which advance bookings from the parties had also been secured.”

“The cancellation of over 90% of marriages however completely dashed our hopes and gave the most severe blow to the florists,” said Kumar.

“The lockdown in Bengal and cancellation of trains running between Dhanbad to Calcutta have also affected our business prospects further and majority of florists are in debt,” said Kumar.

“As all the stock coming from Howrah has affected the procurement of flowers, many are bringing flowers from Krishnanagar in Nadia district of Bengal,” said Kumar.

Rahul Kumar, a flower retailer of station road in Dhanbad said, “We have received advance booking for marriages from seven parties but for six of them we had to return the advance money due to cancellation of marriage while for the seventh, the marriage took place on a much smaller scale with 30% expense on flower decoration of the agreed amount.”

“Though, we are getting some demand from the family of deceased persons for the funeral function due to increased deaths but due to lesser stock availability due to lockdown in Bengal and also due to cancellation of trains like Coal field Express and Black diamond express we are finding it difficult to supply flowers to them,” said Rahul Kumar.

Sunil Malakar, another flower retailer of station road said, “We had around eight advance booking for marriages but all of them stand cancelled and instead a few are coming to procure Jaymala for carrying out the decoration of the vehicle for the bride and groom themselves.”

“We are in extreme poverty and are even deprived of ration cards as despite making online applications since the last six years we have not received the ration card so far,” said Malakar.