Those who stall Metro, dump garbage must be penalised: HC

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Thursday expressed its displeasure at protestors who stall Metro services and those who dump garbage on streets, causing nuisance and disturbance to common people. The court suggested that penal action should be taken against such people.

Hearing a plea filed by Puran Chand Arya, who had sought action against those who were responsible for the alleged stalling of Metro services in the city on May 31 due a brawl between the station manager and a CISF jawan, a bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar remarked that “all of them should go to jail for such protests”.

The court also issued notices to the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), Central Industrial Security Forces (CISF) and the city police — the parties involved in the brawl over parking at Dwarka Sector 21 Metro station that led to Blue Line services getting stalled for a few hours.

The court clubbed the matter with another PIL, which it had initiated itself over the May 24 agitation by the contractual sanitation workers of the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) who had dumped garbage outside prominent government buildings such as the Shastri Bhavan and the Rail Bhavan in Lutyens’ Delhi, demanding regularisation of jobs and better wages.

The plea, filed through advocate Abhishek Chaudhary, contended that commuters had to face “unsavoury precedents being set with a bloody fight between CISF and Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), who usually work in tandem to keep the metro moving and DMRC employees doing a ‘rail roko’ to protest against the alleged assault”.