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New Delhi: The Gujarat high court on Thursday (December 9) came down heavily on the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) for prohibiting street vendors selling non-vegetarian food. “You don’t like non-veg food, it is your lookout. How can you decide what people should eat outside? How can you stop people from eating what they want,” the bench asked, according to LiveLaw.
Justice Biren Vaishnav was hearing a plea filed by 20 street vendors from Ahmedabad, challenging the non-implementation of the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014. Most of the street vendors involved in the case run carts that sell eggs and cook eggs for customers. Some others also sold cooked non-vegetarian food; a few sold fruits and vegetables.
“How can you decide what people should eat? Suddenly because someone in power thinks that this is what they want to do? Tomorrow you will decide what I should eat outside my house? Tomorrow they will tell me that I should not consume sugarcane juice because it might cause diabetes or that coffee is bad for my health,” the judge observed orally in court.
The petitioners’ counsel, Ronith Joy, argued before the court that the vendors’ carts had been seized without any official order, Indian Express reported.
“Non-vegetarian food is being prepared and sold within the State of Gujarat for centuries. There is no embargo to sell eggs or other nonvegetarian food items either in the Constitution or any other law enacted by Parliament. Under what authority or power are the Respondents preventing the Petitioners and persons alike from vending is something that is not available in public domain. This is nothing but bigotry to say the least,” the plea states.
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Satyam Chhaya, AMC’s standing counsel, had earlier stated that the petition has been filed “under some misconception” and that “there is no drive to remove all non-vegetarian (carts)”. Chhaya submitted that the reason for removal was “encroachment on the road, which is a hindrance to public traffic or absolute blockage of pedestrians”.
To this, the judge asked is the anti-encroachment drive was being used as a guise to target vendors of non-vegetarian food. “Under the guise of implementing something…For example, let’s be very honest, around the Vastrapur lake, if there were hawkers selling eggs and omelette (and) overnight you decide because the party in power decides we don’t want to eat eggs, we want to stop them…you will pick them up and take them away?…why are you doing that?…Ask your corporation commissioner to remain present here…how do you dare to indiscriminately pick up people like this?” Justice Vaishnav asked.
Chhaya had denied that this was the case.