Dear All,

As you may be aware, since the last few months, street vendors have been getting evicted from different parts of Bangalore .

Vendors have been evicted from Shivajinagar, Jayanagar, Gandhinagar etc.  Three months ago around 350 vendors were evicted in Shivajinagar. These are people who had been conducting their businesses at that place since 20-30 years. Only 120 of them have been given alternate place to vend (and that too at a place where there is not much business!) . The rest have been left to fend for themselves.

Similar is the case in other areas as well.

All this is in violation of the National Urban Street Vendors Policy 2009 (attached) which explicitly states -' The right to carry on trade or business mentioned in Article 19(1) g of the Constitution, on street pavements, if properly regulated cannot be denied on the ground that the streets are meant exclusively for passing or re-passing and no other use.” (emphasis mine)

HEnce, in order to ensure that the rights of street vendors are met and that they are given back their original place of business, a city wide joint campaign of several groups of vendors, organizations and indivdiuals has been launched - Beedhi Vyaaparigala Hakkotaya Andolana . As a first part of that campaign, we will have a protest march from Russel Market Chowk to the BBMP head office at 11am on Thursday, 21 October. Please see the details below. Please do participate in the march and please also pass on the message to friends and family.

Thanks,
Vinay.

Beedhi Vyaaparigala Hakkotaya Andolana

A city level campaign of Street Hawkers, Dalits, Human Rights Activists, Social and Progressive Organizations

End our evictions. They are unconstitutional and contrary to the National Street Vendors Policy

Value our contributions to the society. Respect our fundamental rights. We demand legal cover and social security

Thursday, Oct 21 , 11am

Rally from Russell Market Chowk to BBMP Head Office

The past several months have seen the BBMP, the police and Muzrai departments undertake an aggressive and continuous exercise to forcibly evict us from the streets and pavements of Shivajinagar, Jayanagar, Ulsoor and Gandhinagar without any prior notice or allocation of any alternate location for our livelihood. Since then our families are struggling to survive - being left with absolutely no source of income. The reason given for our evictions is apparently that we are impeding flow of traffic and pedestrians or that our presence makes the city ugly.

We are among the poor people of this city – and vending on the street is our sole source of livelihood. From the vegetable vendor pushing his cart in localities, to the cobbler, the coconut vendor, the flower seller outside places of worship, the tea seller, the santhes, the general public depend on us for their daily needs and convenience. Urban areas in India started with Santhes or traditional street-side markets. Santhes have made cities, today the governments wants to shut down street vending and instead support malls.

Through our own initiative and enterprise we have worked very hard to live a life of dignity and respect. Like all others, we depend on our occupation to support ourselves, to educate our children, to take care our families and to protect ourselves to the best of our abilities. Instead of recognizing our worth and valuing us, we are being trampled upon. In Shivajinagar, within a hour, our efforts of 30 years were thrown out, our families turned destitute without a roof over our heads, our kids were forced to leave schools and today we are struggle to have a meal a day.

We are the citizens of this country, just as all the others – and the state government, the corporation, its elected members have the responsibility and the duty to respect our rights. Through our votes, we have given them the right to govern us justly. Instead of doing justice to our rights, we are increasingly seeing how our most basic rights are violated.

These actions of the BBMP are not just illegal and unconstitutional but also contrary to the National Policy on Urban Street Vendors, 2009 issued by the Government of India, which has been notified to provide for the protection of livelihood of urban street vendors.

The BBMP has to stop its illegal actions and do all that is just and necessary to protect the fundamental rights of the street hawkers. Thus, we demand:

1. The evicted vendors should be restored back to the place they were evicted from and a space of 1mtr X 1mtr must be allotted to each vendor on the extreme side of the pavement to carry out their hawking. In case the BBMP does not restore our space back by October 28th, we will go ahead and resume our business from the morning of October 28th, at the place we were evicted from.

2. The BBMP must reframe its Street Hawking scheme in accordance with the Constitution of India, the Supreme Court judgments and the National Policy on Urban Street Vendors 2009

3. The BBMP must undertake not to carry out any evictions without following the due process of law. Atrocities against vendors should be stopped immediately. In the name of beautification, BBMP must not evict any vendors anywhere in Bangalore.