Visitors and traders in Connaught Place, the capital’s shopping epicentre, have to deal with a new problem — encroachment by scores of street vendors.
Visitors and traders in Connaught Place, the capital’s shopping epicentre, have to deal with a new problem — encroachment by scores of street vendors.
Visitors with vehicles wanting to enter the NDMC underground parking in Palika Bazaar face a battle because of the heavy encroachment by “tehbazaaris” that often causes traffic jams.
Most part of the road is occupied by vehicles lining up for the parking which creates a bottleneck in the inner circle of Connaught Place, leading to jams.
According to the New Delhi Municipal Council records, there are 946 “tehbazaari” vendors and 150 hawkers registered with them.
Traders, however, allege that there are around 500 more street vendors encroaching in the areas and the civic-body has not taken any action against them despite numerous complaints.
“You move towards Palika Bazaar and you will find there are more ‘tehbazaari’ vendors and hawkers than there are shops inside the market. Half of them do not even have licence to sit there and do business. We have raised the complaints so many times, but the NDMC hasn’t paid any attention,” according to Vinod Gulati, former president of the Palika Bazaar Traders’ Association.
“Despite holding several meetings with the top NDMC officials, the agency has shown complete indifference to our plight, which has cost the market more than 40 per cent of its business since the tehbazaaris first came up,” Arjun Malik, a trader at the underground Palika Bazaar, said.
Echoing his views, New Delhi Market Association president Atul Bhargava alleged, “These vendors can’t be illegally squatting here without any assistance from the NDMC. They are definitely paying bribes to stay intact there that is why no action has been taken against them.”
The NDMC authorities, however, denied the allegations of taking any bri-bes and said to check illegal squatting they are in process of issuing smart cards to identify the licen-sed “tehbazaari” vendors.
“It is not that we are not trying to resolve the encroachment problem. We are planning to issue smart cards to the licensed vendors so that their identification is streamlined during the encroachment drives,” said Neeraj Bharti, director of NDMC’s enforcement department.
