Traders will stop the sale of fish across the state from Thursday and go on an indefinite strike called by the Bihar Rajya Machli Vyavsay Sangh. They have been protesting against the ban on the sale, storage and transport of dead fish in the Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) area. The health department had enforced a blanket ban on all kinds of fish live as well as dead from January 14 for a period of 15 days after formalin and other heavy metals were found in samples collected from city markets. Although the ban on live fish was lifted on January 18 by the state government, that on dead ones is still effective. Bihar Rajya Machli Vyavsay Sangh president Anuj Kumar told this newspaper on Monday, We had sought an appointment to meet chief minister Nitish Kumar, but did not get one. We will stop the sale of fish and go on an indefinite strike from Thursday until the ban is lifted. The traders’ association has also decided to send fish samples from Muzaffarpur, Gaya, Bhagalpur and Darbhanga to the Regional Diseases Diagnostic Laboratory-Kolkata on Tuesday. Tests will be performed on them to check whether formalin and other heavy metals are present. We often conduct tests on random fishes that come from Andhra Pradesh using a kit developed by Central Institute of Fisheries Technology and Indian Council of Agriculture Research, said Kumar. Traders also claimed that if the government encouraged fish farming on a larger scale in Bihar, they would not have to depend on other states and pay extra for importing fish. The government ponds in the state are mostly dry.