Chandigarh: MC House rejects proposal to recategorise vendors

During the General House meeting of Chandigarh municipal corporation (MC) on Tuesday, the minutes of TVC’s meeting were tabled and a proposal was made to convert the categories of “chat/golgappa walas, dupatta dyers, clothing repairs or tailors, key makers, fruit juice sellers and other categories” into essential service provider category

Cutting across party lines, city councillors on Tuesday rejected the proposal of Town Vending Committee (TVC) of converting the licences of around 385 non-essential service category vendors into essential service category.

Officials also proposed that licences of 2,832 registered street vendors should be cancelled immediately as they never paid vendor fee to the corporation. (HT File photo)

While terming the city as ‘Farhi-garh’ due to mushrooming of unregistered vendors and authorities’ blind eye in tackling encroachments across the city, BJP councillor Saurabh Joshi said as per MC’s data, licences of as many as 1,219 non-essential service providers were converted into essential service providers in the past four years and were granted permission to sit at their surveyed site. “The sad part is that vendors who are paying regular fees are suffering, while illegal vendors are proliferating in markets across the entire city due to rampant corruption in the enforcement department which does not remove them,” Joshi said.

During the General House meeting of Chandigarh municipal corporation (MC) on Tuesday, the minutes of TVC’s meeting were tabled and a proposal was made to convert the categories of “chat/golgappa walas, dupatta dyers, clothing repairs or tailors, key makers, fruit juice sellers and other categories” into essential service provider category.

Besides this, officials also proposed that licences of 2,832 registered street vendors should be cancelled immediately as they never paid vendor fee to the corporation. The house, however, deferred the agenda for discussion in the next House meeting.

As per a 2016 survey report, the city has 10,903 registered street vendors in all, divided in three categories- street, essential and non-essential. They were allotted vending sites for five years and had to pay a monthly licence fee. Of it, only 3,595 are paying up their dues on a regular basis. As many as 7,308 registered street vendors owe a whopping ₹75 crore to the MC and at least 2,352 vendors have not paid their fee even once.

Aam Aadmi Party councillor Damanpreet Singh alleged, “The members of the TVC are party to corruption. After accepting bribes, they are letting illegal vendors thrive across the city. We demand a fresh survey of vendors and a check on registered vendors. Illegal vendors should not be allowed to operate and a new committee should be formed or a vigilance inquiry should be conducted to make Chandigarh encroachment free.”

Meanwhile, registered as well as unregistered vendors have been operating from unauthorised spaces across the city, occupying corridors, pavements, road berms and even parking lots. Not only this, unregistered vendors can be seen sitting in Sector 17 Plaza, even when it is ‘no-vending zone’ area. Sectors I to 6 and Sector 17 were declared no-vending zones in 2019 and only essential service providers are permitted to operate in these areas. Without being registered or paying any official licence fee to the civic body, many such vendors are operating right under the nose of the MC and that too without any fear of enforcement wing.