"Our Prime Minister says he was a vendor himself, a tea vendor, then why is he so indifferent to the continuing and illegal harassment of street vendors? Why don’t our protesting voices reach him?” says Jitender Bahadur Singh, a wiry man in his early fifties.
Mr. Singh, who till recently used to sell readymade garments in Lajpat Nagar central market, was one of the scores of hawkers in Delhi who braved the rain on Wednesday afternoon to stage a protest march from Palika Bazaar to Jantar Mantar. His shop was shut down before Independence Day and he hasn’t been allowed to set it up again.
“With my business disrupted time and again, I have run up a debt of Rs. 1.5 lakh,” said Mr. Singh.
Cornered
The protest rally, organised by the National Association of Street Vendors of India (NASVI), was attended by vendors from Lajpat Nagar, Sarojini Nagar, Janpath and Sansad Marg, besides other parts of Delhi.
They carried placards stating that shutting down of their businesses would leave them with only one option – begging.
“The police harassment has become unbearable. We can’t even leave our stall for two minutes to go to the toilet – the cops come and confiscate our wares. They do this even without making a panchnama, which is illegal,” said Kanchan Devi, a street vendor from Sarojini Nagar market.
Arbind Singh, national coordinator of NASVI, said: “Municipal bodies are neither respecting the judiciary nor the executive. Despite High Court stay orders against eviction, and provisions of the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 offering them protection from police harassment, vendors are being slapped with arbitrary challans of anywhere from Rs. 5,000 to Rs.10,000 and their stalls declared illegal.”
Kuldeep Srivastav, a vendor from Lajpat Nagar, said: “Dalals have taken over the business of extorting street vendors. They do a round of the market on a scooty and collect money on behalf of cops or municipal officials or even local politicians. If you don’t want to be evicted, you have no option but to pay up.”
Renu, who sells garments on Janpath, said, “I have been selling clothes from the same spot in Janpath since 2002. I have multiple documents to prove the legality of my stall. But ever since the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) got a new director of enforcement in February, the harassment has been acute. Nearly 4,000 vendors have been evicted in the NDMC area since then. The latest excuse for eviction is smart cities.”
The NDMC area is one of the localities picked for development under the smart city mission.
As per the Street Vendors Act, 2014, no hawker can be evicted from their spot until a survey of existing hawkers has been carried out, hawking and no-hawking zones demarcated, and identified hawkers issued vending certificates.
These measures are yet to be carried out in Delhi.
