This article was first published in the print edition of Manushi Journal. (Issue-153)
In response to a petition filed by the Chandni Chowk Vyapar Mandal, the Supreme Court passed an order on March 8, 2006, that the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and New Delhi should remove all unauthorized street vendors from Delhi since they had failed to produce a workable plan for creating authorized Hawker Zones in Delhi, as mandated by the National Policy for Street Vendors adopted by the Central Government in January 2004. The justification offered by the Honourable Court for mass clearance of vendors is that “unauthorized” squatting by vendors on roads and footpaths, which exist for the benefit of ordinary people living in those localities, interferes with the “fundamental rights of the citizens.” The MCD has been given eight weeks within which to present a realistic plan to implement the National Policy for Street Vendors (NPSV). But in the meantime the Court has ordered the MCD to submit a compliance report within four weeks on the action taken to evict all unlicensed street hawkers.
This order amounts to punishing the victims and rewarding the offenders. It will spell doom and disaster for the lakhs who earn their living from hawking and vending. Its impact will be felt not just in Delhi but on one crore hawkers and their dependents in other cities and towns as well, since their municipal bodies have likewise failed to give legal space to hawkers…