AAP slams south Delhi corporation for nod to food vans

NEW DELHI: Aam Aadmi Party MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj on Thursday slammed the BJP-led South Delhi Municipal Corporation for passing a scheme to provide permanent licences to mobile restaurants and eateries, like food cart or food trucks, on the roads and footpaths in the city.
The scheme has a condition that these licences could only be issued by the local councillor, which means “BJP is trying to give full power to the local councillors so that they can earn crores of money before the upcoming polls,” Bharadwaj said.Demanding its rollback, he added that the scheme would bring massive chaos.
Earlier, the Centre had formulated Street Vendors’ Protection Act, under which the authorities should have identified the street vendors and issued licences in their respective zones. But the corporations have not done any such thing, Bharadwaj said.
“It will not only harm the pedestrians but also the existing street vendors. The only reason behind the scheme is BJP’s corruption, and before leaving the corporations, it wants to completely finish the institution,” said Bharadwaj and asked if BJP had consulted the RWAs and the people of Delhi before passing the scheme.
Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor said, AAP has developed a habit of levelling false allegation every day. “Food cart scheme is people-friendly, under which food cart licence will be issued in all 104 SDMC wards. Councillors of both ruling and opposition parties will be able to make recommendations, so there is no scope of corruption,” the spokesperson added.