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New Delhi: The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has decided to reduce the minimum distance condition for opening a meat shop near any religious place to 100 metres from 150 metres, besides watering down other provisions.
The move comes after the civic body drew opposition from meat sellers in the city who feared that the new regulations passed in October would adversely impact nearly 6,000 meat shops under the MCD jurisdiction and may even force many to shut businesses.
The MCD, in its last House meeting of 2023 on December 28, gave its nod to a revised proposal introduced as a private member bill by AAP councillors Sultana Aabad and Amin Malik that proposed to decrease the minimum permissible distance between a meat shop and a religious place to 100 metres in densely populated areas along with other changes, an official said Monday.
According to the revised proposal, the fee charged for the renewal of the licence for a meat shop has been slashed to Rs 5,000 from Rs 7,000 proposed earlier, the official said.
"In densely populated areas such as Old Delhi, setting a minimum distance between meat shops and religious places to 150 metres is practically not feasible.
"This will cause inconvenience to meat sellers. That is why we proposed to decrease this limit to 100 metres," Sultana Aabad, councillor from Jama Masjid, told PTI.
In October last year, the civic body had passed a new licensing policy for meat shops that was aimed at standardising licensing fees across the MCD zones and fixing the minimum distance between a meat shop and any religious place to 150 metres.
The revised proposal brings down the fine imposed in case of violation of rules to Rs 10,000.
In the previous proposal, the fine imposed for rule violation was set as Rs 20,000 for the first time and Rs 50,000 for any further rule breaks.
Besides, the Corporation has also given its nod to reduce the minimum area requirement for opening a meat shop to 50 sq ft from 60 sq ft set earlier.
"These are poor people and many of them cannot afford to start a meat shop on a large area of land. Also, due to limited space available in congested areas, it becomes difficult to rent a large space," Aabad added.
Traders in Delhi were also dissatisfied with the increased annual charges.
The Delhi Meat Merchants Association had opposed the proposal stating that it would lead to “corruption” and threatened to move to court if the policy was not rolled back.
The condition of a minimum distance of 150 metres between a meat shop and any religious place like temple, mosque and gurudwara was part of a proposed new policy for granting new or renewed licenses for meat shops approved on October 31 last year.