COURTING JUSTICE FOR STREET VENDORS IN DELHI

by Arbind Singh -NASVI Co-ordinator

Two landmark Supreme Court decisions signpost the long and difficult road to recognition of Delhi street vendors and their rights by the city authorities.  These are: Sodhan Singh vs NMCD (1989)and Genda Ram vs MCD (1992). 

As a result of Supreme Court directives, two committees were appointed to identify genuine vendors and award them their trading licences.  These were the Thareja (TC) Committee which was assigned the area under the NMDC, and the Chopra Committee (CC) which was put in charge of the MCD area.

In Sodhan Singh vs NMCD the court was approached thrice - in 1989, 1992 and 1998.  Justice K Singh made a historic decision in 1989 when he declared vending on street pavements within reasonable restrictions, a fundamental right. The Thareja Committee, made up of  three members, was tasked to implement this decision by considering whom, of more than 80 000 vendors, were eligible for a trading space. 

To ease its task, the TC divided the NMDC area into five zones.  Trading places for hawkers in each zone were identified.  Further, they were categorized into five groups, in order of  the number of years spent as vendors, for consideration, viz :

     1.  those vending from 1977 or before

     2.  those  vending from 1978-1980 and

     3.  those vending from 1981-1987.

The NMDC formulated a scheme through which the first group would be given kiosks or stalls, while the second group would get these depending on whether they were available.  Alternatively, they would get a tehbajari licence. The third category would get tehbajari licences only if space was available. Their eligibility would be determined by presentation of documents such as receipts issued to them by the NMDC, challans by the police and so on.

Despite the TC‘s hard work (It cleared 5627 vendors as eligible for licences), the allotments did not take place. It seems that the NMDC deliberately gave the tehbajari licences to vendors, knowing that this is not a licence as such, but a fee paid for using space. This enables traffic police to eject vendors from a trading spot if they feel that vendors are obstructing traffic.

Till 1992, tehbajari receipts indicated the name of the trading zone in which a vendor could trade.  However, after 1992, these names were omitted, so that an evicted vendor had no “evidence” of the place in  which she had been trading.

Further, names of trading places were purposely abbreviated to mislead and confuse eg a vendor having the letters SB stamped on her receipt and believing this entitled her to trade in her spot in Sadar Bajar would be told by NMDC officials that this was actually for the Sunday Bajar!!

In 1998, the Supreme Court  was approached again in Sodhan Singh  “III”.   It ordered that a hawker  could change her trade if she wanted to, as long as it was a permissible trade. The BC Chaturvedi Committee was appointed to determine the final allotment of vendors’ trading licenses.

The case of Genda Ram vs MCD is a replica of the Sodhan Singh case in most respects. The court had the Chopra Committee appointed to identify and allot  trading places to genuine vendors in old Delhi - the area  under the MCD. This area was divided into 12 zones; 84624 applications were considered out of which only 4128 were cleared.  Priority was also based on the number of years spent in vending. Most of the licenses awarded however, were the tehbajari.

Because of their bad experiences, vendors have realized that favourable court  decisions on their own are not  enough. They need strong  unions and organizations to secure positive outcomes for themselves, from the implementation of such decisions.