How should cities reclaim footpaths? | Explained

The story so far:

Following the Supreme Court’s recognition of the right to walk on safe, obstruction-free footpaths as a fundamental right, Bengaluru Development Minister Krishna Byre Gowda directed the five city corporations under the Greater Bengaluru Authority to launch a 10-day ‘Safe Footpath’ drive. The drive removed thousands of street vendors from pavements and cleared encroachments. While many welcomed the initiative, it also raised questions over whether the removals complied with the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, which seeks to balance pedestrians’ right to walk with street vendors’ right to livelihood.

Why was the Street Vendors Act enacted?

The Supreme Court’s recognition of the right to walk does not mean street vending has no place on public streets. Long before the latest ruling, the court had repeatedly held that street vending is a ‘legitimate’ occupation protected under Article 19 of the Constitution, while making it clear that it can be regulated in the public interest.

Those judgments were born out of a recurring pattern — municipal bodies and police evicting vendors, mostly without notice, reducing years of livelihoods to rubble overnight.

The Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, was enacted to end such arbitrary removals by laying down the process for regulating street vending.

Contrary to popular perception, the Act is neither an anti-encroachment law nor one that gives vendors an unrestricted right over public spaces. Instead, it seeks to balance two competing rights — the public’s right to safe, obstruction-free footpaths and a street vendor’s right to earn a livelihood. It lays down a step-by-step process that every city is expected to follow before deciding who can vend, where they can vend and when they can be removed or relocated.

What process does the Act prescribe before vendors can be removed?

The first step is the constitution of a Town Vending Committee (TVC), the backbone of the law.

The committee includes officials, police, planning authorities, resident representatives and street vendors themselves, who must make up at least 40% of its members, with representation for women and other marginalised communities. The idea is that decisions affecting vendors should not be taken without vendors having a seat at the table. Every subsequent step is expected to flow through this committee.

Once the committee is constituted, the Act requires it to survey all street vendors. The survey is meant to identify existing vendors before the authorities decide who can continue vending and under what conditions.

Moreover, the Act protects existing vendors during this process. It states that no street vendor should be evicted or relocated until the survey has been completed and Certificates of Vending have been issued. The protection was built into the law to prevent exactly the kind of arbitrary removals that had prompted its enactment.

Once the survey is completed, eligible vendors are issued a Certificate of Vending. It is official permission to vend at a specified location and under specified conditions. The certificate does not give a vendor ownership over public land. It only recognises the right to vend in accordance with the Act.

The Act does not prohibit the removal of street vendors. It only requires that such action follow the process laid down under the law.

Why has Bengaluru’s footpath drive come under scrutiny?

In Bengaluru, corporations started removing vendors before putting in place the mechanism through which the Act is meant to work.

Although Karnataka Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar later promised relocation, the Act requires a TVC to identify vending and no-vending zones. Bengaluru does not have one.

The government’s assurance that street vendors would be relocated also raises another question — who would be relocated? Vendors argued that the city could not rely on a two-year-old survey and called for a fresh enumeration.

The 2024 survey had identified 27,665 street vendors in Bengaluru. Vendors have described the figure as a gross underestimate. Government’s own records also point otherwise. Data from the erstwhile BBMP shows that nearly 1.34 lakh street vendors have availed loans under the PM SVANidhi scheme — almost five times the number identified in the survey.

While the Karnataka government acted on the Supreme Court’s recognition of pedestrians’ right to safe footpaths, the Street Vendors Act makes it equally clear that reclaiming those footpaths cannot become a justification for bypassing the safeguards enacted to protect street vendors’ livelihoods. That balance, not the primacy of one right over the other, is the very foundation of the law.