NDMC thaws, Kwality gets licence

NEW DELHI, JULY 16: After close to a month of not being able to sell ice-creams in push-carts in the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) area, Kwality Walls has now got a six-month’s temporary permission to do so. The clearance, in the form of a permission to use a parking space behind the Regal theatre building in Connaught Place for loading and unloading its ice-cream trollies – the Hindustan Lever-owned company’s permission to ply carts had been withdrawn earlier as it did not have parking space. Interestingly, however, the clearance given yesterday is itself somewhat unusual since Lever still does not fulfil the criteria required.

As per the conditional license, Kwality has agreed to locate a suitable piece of land to build up a cold storage and other facilities for its ice-cream carts within a few months time — under the law, however, companies cannot get licenses for selling ice-cream without such facilities. Kwality has no such facility in the NDMC area. And since teh bazaari’ is usually meant for poor vendors, Lever has agreed to purchase their own land for parking and cold storage. When contacted, Lever officials in Delhi refused to comment and the company spokesperson in Mumbai said that he was not aware of any irregularity.

G.S. Thind, Medical Officer, Health, NDMC, on the other hand had nothing to say about the cold storage, but told The Indian Express that the main reason why NDMC had debarred Kwality-Walls push carts from plying in the New Delhi district (which includes Connaught Place and India Gate and contributes one-sixth — or Rs 10 crore per annum — of the total turnover of Kwality-Walls from northern India) “was that HLL was paying a very low rent for using the parking space behind the Regal building.”

Interestingly, though, in a note written on the Lever case, one of the reasons for cancelling Kwality’s license that Thind himself has given is that it has no cold room for storage in the NDMC area. — Kwality’s cold storage licenses for the NDMC area have all expired.