Shift of dairies: HC slams threats to petitioner

New Delhi: Delhi High Court on Friday took a serious view of alleged threats being given to a petitioner whose plea led to its order of relocating the city's dairies."You will ensure your people in Madanpur Khadar fall in line. They can't threaten anyone. If anyone threatens the petitioner, we won't tolerate it," a bench of Acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Manmeet PS Arora warned the counsel representing an association from that area."Speak to your clients forcibly and candidly," HC said, as it recalled its order, dictated minutes ago, where it had granted some relief to the association.HC acted after counsel for the petitioner informed it that certain people from Madanpur Khadar attempted to approach her. It then asked the local SHO of the area where the petitioner lived to ensure "no harm" came to her and also directed the police to carry out a threat perception assessment before it passed further orders.It was dealing with a batch of petitions on the issue of "unhygienic dairies" and reiterated that the court's concern was to ensure there were no dairies running near landfill sites, so that the next generation didn't suffer from any infirmities and diseases due to poor quality of milk."We have sympathy for you (dairy owners). You people are living next to a sanitary landfill. Your life is also under hazard like the life of your animals. You people must realise this and govt must accommodate you somewhere else if they cannot remove the mountain of garbage," it said.Earlier, the court had directed the shifting of Bhalswa Dairy Colony in view of the "inability" of authorities, including MCD and city govt, to take action to stop the milch cattle from feeding on garbage from the sanitary landfills near the Bhalswa and Ghazipur dairies, and also said cows couldn't be allowed to graze on toxic waste.The case deals with the condition of nine designated dairy colonies in Delhi — Kakrola Dairy, Goela Dairy, Nangli Shakrawati Dairy, Jharoda Dairy, Bhalswa Dairy, Ghazipur Dairy, Shahbad Daulatpur Dairy, Madanpur Khadar Dairy and Masoodpur Dairy.During the hearing, some dairy owners from Bhalswa, Ghazipur and Madanpur Khadar said they would either close down their respective establishments or shift to another location in eight weeks.
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