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Street vendor count inflated: Councillors
The town vending committee is headed by the zonal deputy commissioner and has street vendors as its members. Many other councillors also agreed with irregularities in the survey.
The recently concluded survey of street vendors across Delhi has come under criticism from several municipal councillors of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation who claimed that the survey has inflated the number of street vendors under its jurisdiction.
The town vending committees have identified 71,347 street vendors in Delhi, out of which 27,819 were identified in the north corporation areas.
Ajay Sharma, standing committee member and AAP councillor from Mukundpur, alleged that vendors had been placed temporarily at some sites to count them in the survey. “More than 25 street vendors were placed opposite my office just for a few days and they were counted as legal street vendors. I had raised the matter with the zone officials but no action was taken. Large scale corruption is taking place through these surveys,” he alleged.
The issue led to ruckus during the North MCD standing committee meeting on Wednesday when a few physically challenged street vendors, accompanied by Congress councillor Poonam Bagri, forcefully entered the committee room in the civic centre to register their protest, following which proceedings were suspended for 10 minutes. The standing committee has ordered a probe in the matter and announced a re-survey in Jahangirpuri ward, where the survey has allegedly identified an abnormally high number of street vendors.
The Delhi government ordered the town vending committees to carry out a survey to identify all street vendors in the Capital in 2015, in line with the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014. The survey, which aims at identifying eligible street vendors and give them a legitimate status, began in January this year and concluded on September 30.
The town vending committee is headed by the zonal deputy commissioner and has street vendors as its members. Many other councillors also agreed with irregularities in the survey.
Satnam Singh, deputy commissioner of Civil Lines zone, said that the hawkers had appeared a few days before the survey. “We later removed them with the help of local police,” he said.
Singh said that of the 2,861 vendors identified in the 18 wards under Civil Lines zone, 757 vendors (over 26%) were counted from Jahangirpuri ward. “A re-survey will be carried out to detect fake tehbazaris and a committee has been formed to investigate if the vendors are fake. At some places, the committee has found no vendor at all,” he added.
The standing committee chairman Jogi Ram Jain directed immediate removal of illegal vendors after proper investigation in the matter.
According to the North MCD report, civic body teams identified 5,912 vendors in City Sadar-Paharganj zone, 4,018 in Karol Bagh, 2,861 in Civil Lines zone, 5,334 in Keshav Puram zone, 5,080 in Rohini and 4,614 in Narela zone.
Similarly, the South Delhi Municipal Corporation has identified 8,140 street vendors in the Central zone, 7,789 in South zone, 4,350 in West zone and 3,672 in Najafgarh.
National Association of Street Vendors of India had earlier stated that the survey had undercounted the street vendors, claiming that over 50% eligible vendors were left out.
Arvind Singh, national coordinator of NASVI, said, “The actual number of street vendors in the city is at least 2 lakh... around 20% of street vendors left the city during the lockdowns.”
