New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday adjourned for two days the hearing on the Centre's application seeking relief for traders in the Capital who had given an undertaking that they would voluntarily shut down their commercial establishments in residential areas.
A three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice YK Sabharwal and Justices CK Thakkar and LS Panta adjourned the hearing following a request from the Supreme Court monitoring committee that sought time to verify whether the traders had closed shops on their own.
The bench asked the monitoring committee to submit a report by Wednesday evening so the matter could be taken up for hearing the next day.
It also made it clear to the traders that no further time would be granted to them for giving undertakings to the monitoring committee.
In its report submitted on Monday evening, the monitoring committee informed the Supreme Court that till 1645 hrs (IST), it had received 18,459 undertakings from traders stating they had voluntarily stopped business operations and that they had closed their premises.
The committee said it was expecting some more undertakings and it would therefore not be possible to carry out random verifications to ensure that the misuse had stopped.
Senior lawyer MN Krishnamani also made a mention before the bench that about 1,700 schools in the Capital would be affected if the sealing drive continued.
He said as per the notifications issued by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) in December 2005 these schools were allowed to continue till May 2007.
However, the MCD and the monitoring committee were threatening that the 1,700 schools would be sealed if they did not close on their own.
The counsel said the schools should be allowed to continue till the completion of the academic year as the board examinations were around the corner and 800,000 children could be affected.
The bench asked the counsel to give copies of the applications to the amicus curiae Ranjit Kumar and the MCD counsel. The bench asked the lawyers to look into the problem and report to the court on Thursday.
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