Despite Court Push, Lukewarm Efforts Have City Street Vendors Stuck in Limbo

Association Puts Their Number At 3L, Holds MCD & Delhi Govt Responsible For Their Plight

- Siddhanta Mishra

Delhi has been trying to find the right balance between the right of street vendors to make a living and the people's right not to have public spaces and footpaths taken over by them. It has been a simmering issue and whatever steps have been taken till date some on the nudging of the courts have not resolved the problem.

Till now, around 75,000 street vendors have been identified by Delhi government, and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi has issued Certificates of Vending (COV) to 63,724 such hawkers. In its campaigns for the municipal polls on December 4, Aam Aadmi Party has promised serious efforts to regularise the city's street vendors, while BJP councillors in the outgoing corporation claimed to have held workshops on central government-run schemes for such sellers..

According to the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, 2.5% of the population of a city is eligible for street vending, both mobile and stationary vendors. According to NASVI, Delhi has three lakh vendors, of whom only 75,000 are recognised. New Delhi Municipal Council is yet to conduct a survey of the street vendors in its areas.

In 2021, saying that not everyone could be permitted to start hawking on the streets, the Delhi High Court asked the state government and the local civic bodies to implement the Street Vendors Act, which provides for regularised and organised street vending.