NEW DELHI: A day after Delhi government social welfare department announced to launch ‘anti-begging drive’ across the national capital, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday stopped his Social Welfare Minister Sandeep Kumar's plan to start the drive', calling it an “inhuman and futile exercise”.
Kejriwal's on social networking site twitter stated that he cannot allow anti-begging drive in Delhi as it is inhuman. “Most inhuman n futile exercise that social welfare dept cud think of. Am directing them to stop it immediately,” Kejriwal tweeted.
Immediately after Kejriwal's outburst on Twitter in the morning, Kumar issued directions to his team to wind up the proposal.
Kumar had made ten teams comprising of 30 people to carry out anti-begging drive across the city. He wanted to make the city beggar free and the drive was to begin from July 18 and was to end by July 29.
The minister has directed the team to pick up beggars from across the city and produce them before a metropolitan magistrate. The magistrate would then decide whether to let them off or send them to beggar homes.
“The issue is more complex and has to be dealt with more sensitively. And the blueprint prepared by the minister had conceptual flaws which was bound to create controversy,” an official said.
Earlier, the Commissioner of Police Alok Kumar Verma in a bizarre move had directed the elite unit of Delhi police – Crime Branch to catch beggars and people operating gangs of beggars in the national capital.
Verma, in a city crime review meeting, has roped in Crime Branch unit to catch beggars. Sources said that Verma wants the city to be beggars free as most of the footpaths and tourist places are encroached and fortified with beggars. Sources said that beggars were “ears and eyes of Delhi police investigating officers” but now they are “redundant as per the commissioner of force”.
The Commissioner of Police believes that beggars have started harassing and creating problems for tourists across the city. Be it mall, shopping complex, office buildings, temples and monuments, and traffic intersections, beggars in Delhi can be found everywhere in the city.
But later, Verma asked the Crime Branch to not catch the beggars but the people operating gangs of beggars. The Crime Branch than carried out a survey of the beggars across the city and has deployed informers to catch the beggars