NEW DELHI: A day after the Delhi government’s social welfare department announced to launch the ‘anti-begging drive’ across the city, 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 Twitter handle said 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 30 people each to carry out anti-begging drives 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 had 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 sensitivity. 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 had directed the Crime Branch to catch beggars. Once upon a time, beggars were the “eyes and ears of Delhi police investigating officers” but now, the Commissioner of Police believes that they have started harassing tourists across the city. But later, Verma asked the Crime Branch to catch not the beggars but the people operating gangs of beggars.