MCD seals 54 to 56 jewellery shops in Chandni Chowk after Satya Niketan

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi sealed 54 jewellery and bullion shops in Kucha Mahajani, inside Chandni Chowk, on Thursday morning, according to the corporation's own statement. Traders put the number at 56. The action started around 11:30 a.m. Gold and silver stock that was inside the premises stayed inside. Owners say the value runs to crores of rupees.

MCD said the shops were operating from basements in breach of the Unified Building Bye-Laws 2016 and Master Plan Delhi-2021, and without mandatory fire and other statutory clearances. Sealing orders went out under Section 345-A read with Section 347 of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act. The corporation said it acted on directions of the Monitoring Committee of the Supreme Court.

Yogesh Singhal, president of the All India Bullion and Jewellers Association, said officials and police arrived, pasted notices and sealed several buildings at once. Traders say they were not given a fresh warning that Thursday would be the day. One notice shared by the association is dated 12 May 2026. It told the occupier to stop basement misuse and bring the premises within permitted use within 48 hours or face sealing for commercial activity.

Why this lane, and why this week

Kucha Mahajani is a bullion lane. Basements there have long been used as strong rooms and trading floors. Master Plan rules treat many of those basements as storage, not as shops. After a five-storey paying-guest building in Satya Niketan collapsed and killed seven people, MCD widened a drive against illegal and dangerous structures. Chandni Chowk's jewellery basements were already on older files. They became an easy target once the monitoring committee's orders were in motion.

The association asked whether only traders would pay for Satya Niketan, or whether departments and politicians who allowed the buildings would also face action. That is a political sentence. The legal sentence is simpler. A basement used as a shop without fire clearance can be sealed under the DMC Act. Thursday's teams used that power.

The stock problem

Sealing a grocery shop locks rice. Sealing a bullion shop locks metal. Traders want a supervised window to move inventory to a bank vault or another licensed premise. MCD has not, in the first statements, described such a window. Until it does, insured stock sits behind a municipal seal in a lane that already attracts theft.

The Supreme Court on Thursday separately declined to pull the Satya Niketan collapse case up from the Delhi High Court, saying things had started moving. The two events share a week and a regulator. They do not share a building. Kucha Mahajani's owners now have to fight the seals on planning grounds while their working capital sits in the dark. That is the concrete consequence of a drive that began with a collapsed PG and arrived, on Thursday, in a gold lane.