Traders' body Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has written to Union Urban Development Minister Hardeep Singh Puri alleging that the Supreme Court-appointed monitoring committee is "dictatorial" and "anarchic" in their working.
The CAIT in the letter also asserted that the monitoring committee has become an institution in itself and that it was "commanding orders on constitutional agencies such as the municipal corporations, DDA, Delhi Police, and NDMC etc under the guise of powers of the Supreme Court".
"We wish to bring to your kind notice (to) the dictatorial and discretionary attitude of the monitoring committee in matter of sealing of shops and taking other penal actions in Delhi against traders, and people in general," the letter read.
The traders' body also claimed that the sealing drive conducted recently at Chattarpur, Amar Colony and Rajouri Garden was done at the behest of the monitoring committee without furnishing any prior notice.
"The sealing team did not even make an attempt to verify whether the property to be sealed is legal or illegal. Simply on the orders of the monitoring committee the shops were sealed. Same thing happened in other areas of Delhi also," the letter to the minister stated.
The BJP-ruled civic bodies have undertaken sealing drive initiated by the Supreme Court-appointed monitoring committee. Commercial premises in the city have been sealed by the building department of municipal corporations for failing to deposit conversion charges according to provisions in the master plan. Thousands of shops have been sealed since last December and there is still no sigh of relief amid all efforts allegedly put up by all concerned stakeholders.