Apex Court seals traders’ hopes

NEW DELHI: Much to the dismay of agitating traders in Delhi, the Supreme Court-appointed Monitoring Committee on Tuesday asked MCD to resume its sealing drive from November 2. The committee directed the civic body to resume the drive from Thursday instead of Wednesday, MCD sources said.

The civic body officials are also expected to meet the members of the committee on Wednesday to work out the modalities and other logistic factors while resuming the drive, which had been suspended due to the festive season.

“We have received an order from the monitoring committee that sealings will not take place on Wednesday due to the prevailing law and order situation and the bandh called by traders,” said Deep Mathur, PRO, MCD. Meanwhile, striking traders continued to hold the Capital to ransom with most of the markets closed for the second day.

On Tuesday, the second day of the traders’ bandh, the situation in the Capital was better. However schools, chemists and clinics were open. Even the Delhi Metro was back on service on all the four stations that were closed on Monday. A few token rallies were taken out in markets and effigies of Sheila Dikshit and her colleagues were burnt. 

Meanwhile traders said that they might just extend their bandh. “We have got support from all quarters and till we get a final written assurance on halting the sealing, the fight will continue,” said Praveen Khandelwal, President of Confederation of All India Traders.