MCDs have 20 days to shut 9,000 illegal factories, only 15 officials to do it

The three Delhi civic bodies— east, north and south — have less than 20 days to issue notice and seal over 9,000 illegal factories running from residential areas

The three Delhi civic bodies— east, north and south — have less than 20 days to issue notice and seal over 9,000 illegal factories running from residential areas across the capital, and they have only 15 Factory Inspectors (FIs) to do it.

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This translates to roughly 600 factories on the head of each FI, who only takes along a Delhi Police personnel, generally of constable rank, for protection, and a BSES (power distribution company) technician to cut off the electricity connection of the offending unit.

Chief secretary of Delhi Vijay Dev had ordered the action during a meeting recently. A report on the same has to be submitted to Justice Pratibha Rani, chairperson of an oversight committee appointed by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on this issue, on January 15. Simultaneously, hearings on the issue are ongoing at the Supreme Court, which had asked authorities to close offending units first in year 2003.

“The Delhi State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (DSIIDC) has allotted only 24 hubs in the city as ‘notified industrial areas’. These include six in east Delhi: Patparganj, Jhilmil, Friends Colony, Jawahar Nagar, Karawal Nagar, Mandoli; 15 in south Delhi that include Okhla, Mohan Cooperative, Mayapuri, Keshopur, etc., and the rest in north Delhi that include Narela, Bawana and Wazirpur,’” a senior municipal officer said. “All other factories in the city are violators and liable for sealing, unless they qualify as ‘small household industrial units,” he added.

During the third phase of identifying and closing illegal units, the three municipal corporations have listed several “illegal factory clusters’ that are involved in garment manufacturing, jeans dyeing, plywood work, furniture making, cardboard work, engineering/welding work, etc.

“We are really short-staffed. We have only six Factory Inspectors (FIs) who have to cover the entire 656.91 Sq.km area of south Delhi,” said Ramesh Verma, Additional Commissioner, SDMC. The north corporation has five FIs and east corporation has four. “We have asked our 25 Licensing Inspectors (LIs), who otherwise check shops and not factories, to join the FIs for the job. Today we even asked our personnel department to provide more staff for this, and the four zonal Deputy Commissioners (DCs), who are forming teams for the enforcement work, to speed up the entire process,” he added.

Their job, however, is not easy. A senior East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) officer said, “A month ago, we went to seal a factory in Saboli. We took the police, which kept knocking on the doors of the factory for two hours. Eventually, we had to climb the terrace of an adjoining factory and enter the offending unit’s premises.”

The municipalities have no Factory Inspectors to survey illegal factories at night, though many open and run at night only, officers said. Besides, political pressure to not seal and the threat of life and limb by factory owners is also a huge issue, the officials said.