The Centre will file an application before the Supreme Court to modify its order on sealing in Delhi in view of difficulties faced by traders.
Updated at 7.45 pm
NEW DELHI: Hunting for a solution to the capital's sealing issue, the Centre will file an application in the Supreme Court to modify its interim order providing relief to certain categories of commercial establishments in residential areas of Delhi.
The Group of Ministers set up by the Centre to resolve the issue at its meeting on Thursday also favoured succor to 3.5 lakh traders and decided that the Union Urban Development and Law Ministries should coordinate and address the practical difficulties involved in providing relief to the trading community.
Sources said that filing of an application before the apex court requesting it to modify its interim order was one of the proposals before the Centre to provide relief to the traders and the nitty-gritty will be decided by the two ministries.
After the 90-minute meeting of the GoM chaired by Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil, Union Urban Development Minister S Jaipal Reddy said, "There are practical difficulties involved in providing relief to the traders. The Urban Development Ministry and Law Ministry will together work out a solution."
The meeting took stock of the fact that around 3.5 lakh shopkeepers would be required to file affidavits in the Supreme Court following its September 29 order in the matter and decided that practical difficulties involved in the writing such a huge number of affidavits needed to be addressed, sources said.
Refusing to subscribe to the view that there was a confrontation between the judiciary and the executive vis-a-vis the sealing issue, Union Minister Kapil Sibal, who is also a member of the GoM, said the sole objective was to make Delhi a model city.
Even as the Centre was engaged in implementing the Master Plan for Delhi 2021 at the earliest to provide relief to traders, Sibal said there were procedural constraints as two committees had been formed to finalise the document.
To a question, he said the date of the next GoM had not been decided.
Reddy said the GoM studied the Supreme Court order of September 29 and decided that the Urban Development and Law ministries should find a way out of the situation.
The meeting extended "moral support" to the 50,000 traders who had earlier filed affidavits in the court and for whom the deadline for closing their establishments was October 31, 2006, sources said.
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