Police verification of agents, vehicles must before late-night deliveries can resume in Noida

NOIDA: Home deliveries, which were stopped by Noida police after 10pm a week ago, can resume, but only after a police verification, not only of delivery agents but also the vehicles they use.
At a meeting with restaurateurs and owners of food businesses on Wednesday, the police said the verification process will begin with delivery agents associated with food aggregators like Zomato and Swiggy to begin with and then cover those associated with e-commerce companies like Amzaon, Flipkart and others.
The meeting with the police commissioner Alok Singh was sought by food businesses that were unhappy with the police move, which followed the murder of a cloud kitchen owner on September 1 in Greater Noida’s Mitra Enclave during a late-night brawl.
Food outlet owners saw the curbs, enforced for the duration of the night curfew, as a big blow to their business. The sudden crackdown also left many people depending on takeaway orders for dinner or other meals, because they can’t or don’t have time to cook, in the lurch.
Deliveries in Noida have stopped at 10pm over the past week. Night curfew has now been relaxed by an hour to 11pm by the state government. But it’s not clear if deliveries will be allowed, without verifications, up to 11pm.
Businessmen who were at the meeting demanded that home deliveries be allowed to continue as before but were told by the commissioner that can only happen once the verification process starts.
Police plan to set up a help desk for the verifications. At present, according to restaurateurs, delivery agents are only verified by a third party. Police feel the existing system is not adequate and a “stricter and more reliable” police verification is required to ensure no one with a criminal background is engaged in delivering food and other items. The verification of vehicles is to check if those were linked to any criminal incident in the past.
Other than food business owners, representatives of Swiggy and Zomato also attended the meeting. Varun Khera, president of the Noida chapter of the National Restaurants Association of India who was present at the meeting, told TOI, “The police are of the view that delivery executives need proper police verification. We informed the commissioner that the verification is actually done by a third-party via the court. Swiggy and Zomato representatives informed that between 5,000 and 7,000 delivery executives have been working in the district. The police commissioner said they cannot be allowed to move at night without proper verification. We requested that a help desk be set up to speed up the process,” he said.
What this means is that late-night delivery of food is likely to remain affected in the near future because the verifications will not happen overnight and only a limited number of agents are expected to be available to pick up orders once the process gets under way.
The help desk is likely to function from the Surajpur office of the commissionerate under additional DCP (crime) Elamaran G. “We informed the police that since most delivery agents are from other states and districts, the process will take time,” Khera said.
Elamaran G said the plan is to start verifications with delivery agents who are from Gautam Budh Nagar and then cover all agents associated with Swiggy and Zomato. “After covering the food delivery platforms, the model can be replicated to executives working for other platforms,” he said.
“Swiggy and Zomato representatives informed that labour laws are not applicable on delivery executives, and hence, the platforms were not involved in their verification process directly,” he added.
“At present, they only get a third-party verification done for which the onus lies on the agent.” Elamaran G said the verification will be similar to that of house helpers and Rs 50 will be charged for each verification. Swiggy and Zomato did not respond to requests for a comment.