More milk from Punjab is set to flow into the city. With Delhi Municipal Corporation giving the go-ahead to Punjab Milkfed to sell its Verka brand in Delhi, the milk producers’ cooperative plans to begin with 100 booths in the capital.
Till now, only Amul was permitted to set up booths at designated spots across the city’s localities.The leading milk seller in the capital is Mother Dairy, which was originally set up to cater to Delhi and NCR, but later expanded to other parts of the country. A year ago, MCD decided to allow milk booths in neighbourhood parks with the aim of having the milk seller maintaining the park too. Under this scheme, Amul was allowed to set up milk booths at such places.
The proposal to allow Verka to sell its products at park kiosks and in repurposed dhalaos in the city was tabled at MCD’s meeting on Tuesday by two AAP councillors. The proposal moved by Prem Chauhan and Parveen Kumar said, “The milk booth policy in place in MCD permits setting up sale facilities in parks of half acre and above. The policy is aimed at boosting maintenance of parks given the shortage of gardeners. Often the maintained parks lose their sheen due to lack of maintenance while the dhalaos are a source of nuisance.”
As the House proposal elaborated, the policy stated that the person running the milk booth was responsible for maintaining the park or dhalao. “Therefore, this House resolves that on the basis of the existing policy for establishing Amul booths in municipal parks, a policy for establishing booths run by other government co-operative societies should be prepared and the tender process should start immediately,” the proposal said.
Narinder Singh Shergill, chairman of Milkfed, told TOI that Punjab had already been supplying 20,000 litres of milk daily to 400 shops in central, west and north Delhi through 21 distributors. “The goal is to increase the supply to two lakh litres,” said Shergill. “To achieve this, we will need to augment our presence by setting up booths to sell Punjab Markfed products and hiring more employees in Delhi.” He added that CM Bhagwant Mann was keen to have Verka selling outside the state.
A senior MCD official said, “Any further development on the proposal will happen after the nod from the municipal commissioner.” The sale of Verka products – milk packets, curd, cheese, ice creams, lassi and kheer – has been facilitated in no small measure by the same party, Aam Aadmi Party, being in power in Punjab and Delhi.
“Till March, permission had been granted to Amul to open 173 milk booths, of which 76 are now operating,” disclosed an official. Amul and Verka will now vie for all new booths, whenever and wherever they are approved.
In September 2022, the remunerative and project cell of MCD implemented a unified policy to set up milk booths, prominently Amul sale points, despite some resistance from residents’ welfare associations. Under the policy, milk booth operators are allowed to make a single storey kiosk of around 150 square feet without using cement or mortar at its own cost and pay the water and electricity costs themselves.
The rates paid by the milk seller for the use of disused dhalaos will vary according to the area. In the central and south municipal zones, the rate has been fixed at Rs70 per sq feet of selling space, whereas in the west and Najafgarh zone, the rate is Rs 56 per sq feet. “These rates are based on those adopted by New Delhi Municipal Council, Delhi Development Authority and shops auctioned by the government of India as approved by MCD in August 2020,” the official added.
