Calling the “anti-begging” drive — initiated by Social Welfare Minister Sandeep Kumar — inhuman, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal asked him on Friday to “immediately” stop the “futile exercise”.
“Most inhuman and futile exercise that social welfare department could think of. I am directing them to stop it immediately,” Kejriwal tweeted.
Kejriwal’s direction over Twitter to stop the planned move caught Kumar unaware as he had been pushing for the drive over the last few weeks and it was to begin from Monday.
According to sources, after Kejriwal’s reaction on the microblogging site, Kumar has directed his team to wind up the proposal. Sources said Kumar had not even consulted the Secretary of the department before charting out the roadmap of the drive to make Delhi beggar-free.
The Social Welfare Department had formed several teams which were to pick up beggars from across the city and bring them to the Reception-cum-Classification Centre (RCC) in Kingsway Camp, in North Delhi, before presenting them before a Metropolitan Magistrate. The Metropolitan Magistrate was then to decide if the beggars should be sent to shelters or let off with a warning.
An official said that the issue is more complex and has to be dealt with more sensitively. “And the blueprint prepared by the Minister had conceptual flaws which were bound to create controversy,” the official added.
Social activist Harsh Mander, who has worked for the city’s homeless over the years, criticised the plan saying the same strategy was adopted before the Commonwealth Games, resulting in disastrous consequences.
“There are two ways to make a city beggar-free. One is to create a social security system for vulnerable and destitute people and the other is to drive them out. A threat is used to frighten people away. The same thing had happened before CWG when a large number of people ran away in panic,” Mander said.