NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday sought responses from the Centre and state governments on a PIL seeking to free pavements and roads from encroachment to provide citizens their right to free passage and free flow of traffic on roads.
A bench of Chief Justice R M Lodha and Justices Kurian Joseph and R F Nariman sought responses from the governments within 10 weeks on the PIL filed by NGO ‘Voice of India’ after hearing Dhanesh Ieshdhan.
The court asked the governments to file affidavits on the steps taken by them to implement the national policy on urban street vendors and the laws relating to vending and parking which were designed to provide demarcated and designated zones for hawkers.
The petitioner alleged that there was hardly any space left on pavements for pedestrians who had to find their way through encroachments by street vendors, hawkers and parked vehicles.
He said civic authorities and governments had not taken even preliminary steps to remove the encroachments. The encroached pavements led to the pedestrians spilling on to the roads and parking of all kinds of vehicles on roads severely impeded movement of traffic, leading to serious traffic congestion on road, he said.
The petitioner also alleged that massive corruption among civic authorities and police had led to anti-social elements encouraging encroachment of pavements and roads by vendors for payment of a weekly or monthly fee. Such elements paid a cut to civic body officials and police, who turned a blind eye to the massive problem posed by encroachment to pedestrians and road traffic, the petitioner said.
The Centre had recently enacted the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act 2014, which mandated municipalities to set up restriction free vending zones/night bazaars where hawkers can sell their wares without being harassed by the authorities. Presently, there is no law to regulate and safeguard the interest of urban street vendors in India.
The new statute makes it obligatory on part of the state governments and local municipal bodies to ensure that every street vendor gets security and protection of livelihood. But, the national policy on urban street vending had mandated that hawking should be confined to demarcated zones.
TOI| Sep 6, 2014
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