Public Health (Sections 354–391)

Sections 354 to 391 of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957 form the public-health core of the statute: they convert the Corporation's broad welfare mandate into concrete, enforceable duties touching scavenging and filth, public and private latrines, congested and uninhabitable buildings, the control of dangerous and epidemic disease, sweepers' service conditions, and burning and burial grounds. Spread across Chapter XVI (Sanitation and Public Health) and Chapter XVII (Removal of Congested Buildings and Buildings Unfit for Human Habitation), these provisions are the statutory machinery behind the Supreme Court's repeated insistence that sanitation is a non-negotiable municipal obligation. This note maps each cluster against verified bare-Act text and the leading authorities aspirants must cite.

The scheme: public health as a compulsory function

The public-health provisions do not float free; they execute the obligatory duties the Act fastens on the Corporation. Where the constitution and functioning of the Municipal Corporation sets up the body, Sections 354-391 tell it what it must do for sanitation. The Commissioner is the executive engine throughout, exercising powers as one of the Corporation's principal officers and establishment. The character of these duties was settled in Municipal Council, Ratlam v. Vardhichand, AIR 1980 SC 1622, where the Supreme Court (Krishna Iyer J.) held that a statutory duty to provide sanitation is mandatory and cannot be defeated by a plea of paucity of funds: "a responsible Municipal Council constituted for the precise purpose of preserving public health... cannot run away from its principal duty by pleading financial inability." Though decided under the M.P. Municipalities Act read with Section 133 CrPC, Ratlam governs the reading of every cognate municipal statute, including the DMC Act, and supplies the interpretive backbone for Sections 354-391.

Scavenging, filth and rubbish (Sections 354-358)

Section 354 obliges owners and occupiers to collect filth, polluted matter and rubbish from their premises and deposit it in the receptacles or at the depots and places appointed by the Commissioner, and to keep that matter from polluting streets or public places. Section 355 lets the Commissioner take collection and removal into municipal hands for any premises, with the cost recoverable from the owner or occupier. Section 356 deals with the heavier waste streams: it empowers the Commissioner to require removal of rubbish, trade refuse and offensive matter accumulated on premises used as factories, workshops, stables, slaughter-houses or markets. Section 357 prohibits the accumulation of rubbish or filth so as to be a nuisance, and Section 358 is the residual enforcement lever, allowing the Commissioner to get premises scavenged and cleansed and to charge the occupier when the statutory duty is ignored. Read together this cluster makes filth-clearance a continuing, recoverable obligation rather than a discretionary courtesy, and it is precisely the kind of failure Ratlam declared judicially enforceable. The dual structure is deliberate: the primary duty is laid on the owner or occupier under Section 354, but the Corporation cannot disclaim responsibility, because Sections 355 and 358 let the Commissioner step in and do the work himself while shifting the cost back to the defaulter. Compliance is thus not optional at either end. For factory and trade premises the obligation is heavier still, since Section 356 targets the offensive and bulk refuse that ordinary domestic clearance does not cover, and Section 357 criminalises the very act of letting filth accumulate into a nuisance. The cumulative effect is that a citizen who finds streets fouled by uncleared refuse has a concrete statutory peg, not merely a general grievance, on which to seek a writ of mandamus compelling the Corporation to act.

Public latrines and urinals (Sections 359-364)

Sections 359 to 364 build the sanitation infrastructure. Section 359 requires the Corporation to provide and maintain public latrines, urinals and similar conveniences in proper places and to keep them in proper condition. Section 360 regulates the construction of latrines and urinals so as to prevent them becoming sources of nuisance or disease. Section 361 obliges owners of new buildings to provide latrines and urinals as a condition of construction, dovetailing with the building-control scheme. Section 362 mandates provision for the use of labourers, workmen and others employed in large numbers, and Section 363 requires latrines and urinals for markets, theatres and other places of public resort. Section 364 contains the residual provisions as to private latrines, including the Commissioner's power to require their alteration where they are insanitary. The Supreme Court's reasoning in Virender Gaur v. State of Haryana, (1995) 2 SCC 577, that sanitation is an inseparable facet of the right to life under Article 21 and that Article 47 places improvement of public health as a primary State duty, gives these otherwise technical sections a constitutional charge.

Congested buildings and buildings unfit for habitation (Sections 365-369)

This cluster, falling under Chapter XVII, attacks the housing dimension of public health. Section 365 empowers action for the removal of congested buildings that obstruct light, air or ventilation. Section 366 lets the Commissioner, on information that a building is unfit for human habitation, require the owner to execute works of improvement to render it fit. Section 367 enforces such a notice, allowing the Commissioner to carry out the works at the owner's cost on default. Section 368 is the ultimate power: where a building is unfit for human habitation and is not capable at reasonable expense of being rendered fit, the Commissioner, after serving a show-cause notice and giving the owner the chance to undertake remedial works, may order its demolition. Section 369 deals separately with insanitary huts and sheds. The hearing in this scheme is substantive, not formal: the statute contemplates that the Corporation will withdraw a demolition order if a genuine undertaking to make the building fit is given. These powers are distinct from the unauthorised-construction regime in Section 343, and the two must never be conflated in answers.

Due process before demolition: the Shiv Kumar Chadha safeguards

Because Section 368 ends in demolition, the procedural guarantees are critical. In Shiv Kumar Chadha v. Municipal Corporation of Delhi, (1993) 3 SCC 161, the Supreme Court held that the requirement of notice and a real opportunity of being heard before demolition under the DMC Act is mandatory and not a mere formality, and that an order passed in breach of that requirement suffers from a jurisdictional defect. The Court further held that although the Act bars civil-court jurisdiction in many situations, a suit remains maintainable where the provisions are inapplicable to the building or where basic procedural requirements vital in nature have not been followed, while cautioning trial courts to grant ex parte injunctions against demolition only for recorded reasons and for a limited duration. Shiv Kumar Chadha is the controlling authority on natural justice in DMC demolition cases and should be cited alongside Section 368 whenever the validity of a demolition order is in issue. The judgment harmonises the Corporation's public-health power with the owner's right to be heard.

Washing controls and trade restrictions (Section 370)

Section 370 prohibits washing of clothes by washermen at unauthorised places, confining the trade to spots set apart by the Corporation. The object is twofold: to prevent fouling of public water sources and streets, and to control the spread of disease through soiled and potentially infected clothing. The provision is a public-health measure dressed as a trade regulation, and it links forward to the disinfection and infected-article controls that follow. It illustrates a recurring technique in this part of the Act, regulating a private occupation in the interest of communal sanitation, and complements the filth-removal duties under Sections 354-358 by addressing waste-water and contamination rather than solid refuse. The provision also dovetails with Section 377, which forbids sending infected clothes to a washerman or laundry, so that the washing trade is regulated both spatially, by confining it to appointed places, and substantively, by keeping contaminated articles out of it altogether. Read with the disease-control sections that follow, Section 370 shows that the Act treats laundry and water-fouling as vectors of communicable disease deserving the same pre-emptive control as solid filth.

Control of dangerous and epidemic disease (Sections 371-386)

Sections 371 to 386 are the Act's epidemic-control toolkit. Section 371 obliges the medical practitioner and the head of a household to give information of any dangerous disease. Section 372 permits removal to hospital of a patient suffering from a dangerous disease where the patient is without proper lodging or accommodation. Sections 373 to 375 empower disinfection of buildings and articles, destruction of infectious huts or sheds, and the provision of means of disinfection. Section 376 confers special powers in case of an outbreak of dangerous or epidemic disease. Sections 377 to 382 form a web of contamination controls: infected clothes may not be sent to a washerman or laundry (377), public conveyances must be disinfected (378), drivers need not carry infected persons (379), buildings must be disinfected before letting (380), infected articles may not be disposed of without disinfection (381), and infected persons are barred from making or selling food or washing clothes (382). Section 383 lets the Commissioner restrict or prohibit the sale of food or drink to check disease, Section 384 gives control over wells, tanks and other water sources, Section 385 fixes duties on persons suffering from a dangerous disease, and Section 386 governs disposal of infectious corpses where death has resulted from a dangerous disease. The constitutional anchor for this coercive machinery is the right-to-health jurisprudence of Pt. Parmanand Katara v. Union of India, AIR 1989 SC 2039, which located the protection of life and health within Article 21, and Virender Gaur, which made public health a first charge on the State.

Sweepers and house scavenging (Sections 387-388)

Sections 387 and 388 regulate the human element of sanitation. Section 387 fixes the conditions of service of sweepers and certain other classes of persons employed in municipal service, ensuring continuity of the scavenging workforce on which the entire public-health scheme depends. Section 388 deals specifically with the conditions of service of sweepers employed for doing house scavenging, recognising that private-premises sanitation is delivered through a regulated labour cadre. These provisions sit alongside the general framework for the Corporation's officers and establishment but are tailored to the peculiar vulnerability and indispensability of sanitation workers. They are a reminder that the Act treats public-health delivery as a staffing obligation, not merely a power to issue notices, and that breakdowns in this cadre directly trigger the kind of municipal default condemned in Ratlam. By statutorily protecting the conditions of service of this historically marginalised workforce, Sections 387 and 388 also reflect a welfare dimension: the sanitation that the city enjoys is produced by labour the Act chooses to regulate rather than leave to private bargaining. A failure to maintain this cadre is therefore not an internal administrative lapse but a direct cause of the filth and disease the rest of the chapter is designed to prevent, which is why courts treat the Corporation's sanitation output, and not its excuses, as the measure of compliance.

Burning and burial grounds (Sections 389-391)

The final cluster controls the disposal of the dead, a classic public-health concern. Section 389 empowers the Commissioner to call for information regarding existing burning and burial grounds. Section 390 makes the use of any new burning or burial ground conditional on prior permission, so that location and management are regulated before a site comes into use. Section 391 confers the power to require the closing of a burning or burial ground that has become or is likely to become dangerous to health or a nuisance, subject to the statutory safeguards. Together these sections ensure that the disposal of corpses, like the removal of filth and the control of disease, remains under municipal supervision. They round off a chapter that treats every stage of urban life and death as a sanitation responsibility of the Corporation.

Enforcement, encroachment and judicial oversight

The public-health powers are buttressed by penal and enforcement provisions elsewhere in the Act and by the Commissioner's recovery powers, which let the Corporation execute works on default and charge the cost to the owner or occupier. Courts have policed both extremes of this power. On the duty side, Ratlam and Virender Gaur compel performance and forbid the funds excuse. On the power side, Shiv Kumar Chadha insists on due process before demolition, while encroachment-clearance decisions such as Municipal Corporation of Delhi v. Gurnam Kaur, (1989) 1 SCC 101, and Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation, (1985) 3 SCC 545, confirm that no person has a right to encroach on public property in the name of livelihood, even as they urge humane, planned relocation. The result is a calibrated regime: mandatory sanitation duties the citizen can enforce by mandamus, balanced by procedural protections the citizen can invoke against arbitrary municipal action. For the wider statutory map, see the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act hub and the foundational note on the introduction, object and constitution of the MCD.