Delhi: Civic body passes resolution on separate licences for Meat shops

New Delhi: Meat trading is no longer safe with all the lynchings reported from across India. In a move to deal with this meat obsession that has struck majority community hard this time with saffron party in power, the east corporation has passed a controversial resolution to separate the meat shop licensing procedure from other general licenses.

EDMC is a civic body that issues health licences, mandatory for running eateries and restaurants in the capital.

This resolution will remove meat shops from the 24 types of general trades allowed in residential areas as mentioned in the Delhi Master Plan-2021 section 15.6.3.

While other trades of dairy products, barber shops, laundry and bakery, among others, can only be carried out in a maximum of 20sqm shops on ground floor.

With EDMC’s obsession with everything associated with meat, the civic body has been really busy over the past one-year passing orders related to meat products, TOI reports.

Recently on December 6, the EDMC standing committee had resolved that “only processed and frozen meat should be legalised while the open sale of all kinds of non-vegetarian (food) should be completely banned”.

Then in August, the civic body directed all restaurants to put up halal/jhatka signage outside their establishments.

The committee’s chairman Govind Agarwal stated: “Keeping public sentiments in mind, a separate policy should me made for meat shops. The corporation should send such a proposal to the Delhi Development Authority for master plan amendment.” It added: “A majority of people in our society don’t consume meat products and opening up of meat shops leads to discomfort, which often takes form of clamour. Such situations come to our notice and a danger of disturbance in communal harmony and rioting remains present (sic)”.

This new resolution moved under Section 74 of the Delhi Municipal corporation Act was approved by the House on Monday said: “Due to easy issuance of licence, a large number of shops have come up in narrow residential lanes where (the) number of people eating meat is negligible … People are forced to sell their property at low rates to migrate to other places, which is a painful situation.”