Delhi HC pulls up police on hawkers menace
Orders NDMC to make proper street-vending plan
New Delhi, Nov.11 (Delhi Crown): An angry Delhi High Court has directed the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) to immediately prepare a proper street vending plan with the help of city planning experts to end the hawkers menace in the national capital.
Responding to a plea by “Chandni Chowk Sarv Vyapar Mandal (CCSVM)” seeking the court’s intervention to remove illegal hawkers and vendors occupying no-hawking and no-squatting areas, an anguished two-judge bench of the Delhi HC firmly told NDMC that it expected a status report on steps it will take up when the matter comes up for hearing again on December 6.
NDMC Commissioner would be held directly responsible if the anti-hawking order was ignored, the High Court bench warned.
“If there is no political and executive will, then let it go the way it has to. Why should we be bothered? We are getting a feeling of complete defeat in this matter,” Justices Vipin Sanghi and Jasmeet Singh observed, while pulling up Delhi Police and pointedly telling their counsel that the reason why vendors were not being removed was because they must be paying “hafta” to the police force.
The court further questioned as to why only the Lutyens Bungalow Zone (LBZ) has been spared from becoming an illegal vending zone.
“Why spare (the) Lutyens’ zone? Why should we be exempted? Let them come to Prithviraj Road; let them be in front of President’s House, the high court. Why leave this area, we all should face it,” an annoyed high court bench said, when the Delhi Police claimed it was the sheer numbers of hawkers/vendors in Chandni Chowk that was preventing it from removing them from no vending zones.
The judges also pointed out to there being “too many loose ends” in the Street Vendors Act, 2014, adding that it “unduly favoured vendors”.
“We need to find a permanent solution,” the court said. The bench noted that while vending is recognised as a fundamental right, it needed to be regulated to prevent littering, to give right of way to pedestrians on pavements and to stop hawking from becoming a socio-economic nuisance that it is currently.
