Malls, cinemas & retail shops may be allowed at night in green zones

The government feels this will allow shopping and leisure activities to start up while maintaining physical distancing as traffic will be less than usual and easy to control. On Wednesday, Madhya Pradesh notified retail stores to open from 6am until midnight.

The government has begun internal discussions on allowing malls, cinema halls and local retail stores to open at night in green zones as part of a strategy to resume business in stages.

The government feels this will allow shopping and leisure activities to start up while maintaining physical distancing as traffic will be less than usual and easy to control. A final decision will be taken after the health ministry approves such a move, following which the home ministry may issue an advisory, government officials aware of the deliberations told ET.“Opening up will help the economic activity (get) going,” said one of them.

Some states are also keen to adopt such flexible timings. On Wednesday, Madhya Pradesh notified retail stores to open from 6am until midnight.

Making stores accessible for 18 hours would ensure there’s no crowding.

The labour ministry’s model Shops & Establishments Act 2016 has a provision to allow retail stores to stay open round the clock, but this wasn’t adopted in its entirety by all states, barring Maharashtra. Earlier this year, the latter state gave stores the choice to stay open all night, depending on footfall and security provisions.

The retail sector, which has been hit hard by the lockdown, is keen on the plan.

“It makes a lot of sense to allow malls and other retail shops to operate longer hours at night as it allows social distancing and would ensure panic buying does not happen,” said Kumar Rajgopalan, CEO of the Retailers Association of India (RAI) lobby group.

This will help curb job losses in the sector, which is facing retrenchment of at least 30% since the Covid-19 outbreak began, RAI said.

The association had estimated, before the pandemic, that opening stores for a longer duration will lead to a 10-15% increase in employment in the sector over the next three years.