After HC rap, NMC agrees to allow online garments & mobile sale

Nagpur: After severe censuring from the Nagpur bench of Bombay high court, the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) agreed to allow ready-made garments and

mobile selling shops

to start

online delivery

of products.

The civic body earlier allowed only mobile repairing and

hosiery shops

to function while prohibiting mobile selling and ready-made garments’ stores. Questioning the logic behind such decisions, justice Rohit Deo orally blasted its top officials for such “absurd and illogical” decisions.

“If someone wanted to buy a shirt or trouser or his/her mobile handset is damaged, where they will go. How can hosiery be separated from

clothes store

or repairing from mobile stores? Who had advised the NMC chief for permitting specific shops? From where does he get the advice?” the judge tersely asked NMC counsels — Sudhir Puranik and AM Qazi.

He also sought to know if liquor delivery could be permitted online for the revenue, why not other products like clothes and mobile. The NMC lawyers had to repeatedly seek instructions from its top brass to answer HC’s volley of queries. The government’s notification in the evening that removed Nagpur from the red zone saved their day.

The civic body in its earlier reply stated that the NMC commissioner took feedback from the assistant commissioners of ten zones before taking a decision to allow hosiery and mobile repairing shops to function. “The youngsters usually thronged mobile shops and families in garments store. Hence to avoid crowding, those were not permitted to open,” they said.

Justice Deo warned that though the court wouldn’t venture into executive’s decision making powers, it wouldn’t ignore efforts to use it arbitrarily.

The HC’s flaying came while hearing a bunch of petitions, including one by four lawyers — Shreerang Bhandarkar, Prakash Jaiswal, Kalmal Satuja and Manoj Sable — challenging the NMC chief Tukaram Mundhe’s decision to extend the lockdown in city while allegedly ignoring the centre and state government’s guidelines.


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