MCG yet to recover ₹7 cr from contractors of street vending zones

Senior officials of the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) directed officials to recover dues of ₹7 crore from three contractors who oversaw its street vending zones till 2019. The recovery has been pending since April, when a police case was registered against them and recovery notices were issued

Senior officials of the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) directed officials to recover dues of ₹7 crore from three contractors who oversaw its street vending zones till 2019. The recovery has been pending since April, when a police case was registered against them and recovery notices were issued.

The tenure of three contractors hired in 2016 to oversee street vending zones ended in September 2019 and was not renewed, but they illegally continued to collect monthly fees, including the MCG’s share. (HT Archive)

Officials said that the matter came up for discussion during the MCG’s town vending committee (TVC) meeting last Thursday, following which the civic body’s commissioner, Mukesh Kumar Ahuja, directed officials to recover the dues at the earliest.

“Adhering to the directions of the MCG commissioner, the accounts and legal branches of the MCG have issued fresh notices to all three contractors concerned. They have been given a one-month deadline to deposit the remaining sum, failure of which would lead to lead to further action being initiated against them,” Dr Vijaypal Yadav, deputy municipal commissioner (DMC) of the MCG, who oversees the street vending zones, said.

According to MCG officials, the issue pertains to three contractors hired in 2016 to oversee their street vending zones. The tenure of three contractors ended in September 2019 and was not renewed, but they illegally continued to collect monthly fees, including the MCG’s share, from street vendors.

The MCG has over 1,600 street vendors in its 148 vending zones. For placing their cart in a vending zone, each street vendor pays ₹1,500 per month, of which ₹1,000 went to the contractor and ₹500 to the MCG.

Cumulatively, the three contractors have paid ₹30 lakh and as per the agenda list for MCG’s TVC meeting, the contractors owe the MCG ₹2.68 crore, ₹2.41 crore and ₹1.9 crore.

The issue came to the MCG’s notice in March this year, following which it was raised in a House meeting in April and an inquiry was subsequently conducted. After the probe, the three contractors were blacklisted an FIR was registered against them. However, six months on, they are yet to pay the sum.

Since November last year, there has been severe scrutiny over the vending zones, which also led to the discovery of the three contractors continuing to collect fees from street vendors, officials said.

As per a report submitted by Yadav in April to senior officials for perusal, the MCG, in 2016, had issued a work order for incorporating 3,452 street vendors into its street vending zones but the civic body had managed to only regularise 1,620 vendors under it. Of these, around 350 were also operating illegally as their original owners had either leased the carts to others or transferred the ownership to them, violating norms of the Haryana Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Scheme, 2020.