MC cuts number of vending zones, proposal to be taken up in meet

Ludhiana: The civic officials have reduced the number of proposed sites for setting up vending zones in the city and the proposal will once again be taken up in the MC general house meeting for approval. Apart from this, for registration of vendors too the officials have now written letters to the councillors for getting the vendors registered if their names are in survey list. The officials claimed that last date was June 30 for registration, but many vendors were not in the city at the moment as they are yet to return here.
Initially, there were over 100 vending zones identified for the city and the MC house had given nod after which the proposal went to the government for final notification. Before these sites could be notified, the MC and police kicked off an anti-encroachment drive in various markets of the city. During that drive the police officials rejected some of the sites already selected by the civic officials while citing that these proposed vending zones at these locations would lead to more traffic jams. After that a fresh survey was carried out in all four zones and new sites were identified.
Following this, the officials reduced the number of vending zones from over 100 to just 64 now. Even this will go to the MC house meeting for approval. The officials claimed that now these sites were selected after long discussions with traffic cops and representatives of vendor groups.
The secretary of MC and zonal commissioner of zone C Neeraj Jain said, “We had to reduce a few sites from the shortlisted ones because traffic cops were not in favour of having the vending zones at those locations. Also some were located at short distances from one another, so we clubbed those sites.”
He said they would have to take permission from the MC general house before doing anything. Regarding registration of vendors, he said they had involved the councillors as well and had asked them to get the vendors in their areas registered with the MC, so that vending zones could be formed.
Meanwhile, the situation has returned where it used to be as after lockdown three to four people from a single family have started selling vegetables or fruits while conveniently stationing themselves anywhere on roads. All this is leading to chaos once again. The civic body officials are taking a long time in finalising things, resulting in chaos everywhere.