A decade-long battle to recognise the rights of street vendors across the country may finally yield some result. The Union minister for housing and urban poverty alleviation, Kumari Selja, recently announced that the Centre would introduce the Model Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Bill in this winter session of Parliament. She was speaking at a conference organised in Delhi by the National Association of Street Vendors of India (NASVI).
“The Central government is committed to accord a new deal for achieving secured and dignified livelihood and social security rights of street vendors ... (who) got disenfranchised in the processes of rapid urbanization and unequal urban distribution system,” said Selja while addressing over 1,000 street vendors who had gathered for the meet. “The Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation had drafted a fresh national policy on street vendors in 2009 after a review of the previous policy. The policy underscores the need for a legislative framework to enable street vendors to pursue an honest living without harassment from any quarter. We had drafted a Model Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Bill, 2009 and circulated it to all states and union territories, requesting them to take cue from it while legislating on the subject,” she added. She lamented that “the progress on state legislation had not been encouraging.”
