New Delhi: The Municipal Corporation of Delhi 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 reporters.