Street vendors ‘beg’ to protest civic body, police action

Our Correspondent

Ludhiana, February 16

Irked over the alleged harassment at the hands of the city police and the Municipal Corporation (MC) in the name of removal of temporary encroachments and streamlining the traffic, street vendors today adopted a novel way of protest by holding begging bowl at Jagraon Bridge here today.

The protesting venders said their business shut as a large number of push carts and material were confiscated by the MC, and they were left with no other option but to seek alms to feed their families.

Leading the protest, president of the Punjab Rehri Phari Union Bal Krishan Pappi said for the past 10 days, the vendors were bearing the brunt of highhandedness by the MC and the police with harassment continuing. He said it was unfortunate that the ‘lawmakers’ (elected representatives of the people) had turned into ‘lawbreakers’ and the right to livelihood of the vendors was being snatched.

He said their agitation would continue till all cases against vendors were withdrawn and they were permitted to carry out their business at the current places till vending zones were notified and alternate site allotted to street vendors.

Reiterating his party’s full support to poor street vendors, Youth Akali Dal district president Gurdeep Singh Gosha, who along with SAD district president Ranjit Singh Dhillon, has been booked by the police for joining the protest of street vendors at Clock Tower Chowk earlier, accused the MC of backing out from its avowed stand with respect to street vendors.

Quoting from a letter written by the MC Commissioner to the Vigilance Bureau of the Punjab Police in the context of a probe against certain employees and officials of the tehbazari wing (of MC) way back in January 2018, he said the MC had said as per directions of the Punjab and Haryana High Court made in a civil appeal that street vendors could not be removed till the implementation of the National Policy on Street Vendors.

He said the vending zones, as laid down in the said policy, were yet to be designated and notified, but the MC seemed to have given in to the pressure by the police for removal of vendors from their places of work which had exposed the real ‘anti-poor’ face of both the Congress-ruled MC and the state government.