The South Delhi Municipal Corporation, on Friday, launched an online portal to identify street vendors, as part of a process to issue certificates to the vendors who fulfill eligibility conditions.
According to the action plan, with the SDMC acting as the nodal corporation, street vendors will have to register for the survey on the civic body’s website, while the empaneled agencies will conduct the surveys based on the applications and submit to the respective town vending committees (TVC).
“TVC will recommend to issue vending certificates on the fulfillment of all the eligibility conditions as per the rules. After recommendations of TVC, the assistant commissioner of the respective zones will issue a vending certificate. Applicants will be able to view their status of survey on the website after entering his registration number,” the civic body announced.
A senior SDMC official said that a total of 19,566 vendors have been identified under the civic body’s area of jurisdiction till date; while a senior east civic body official said that total of 19,950 have been identified in east Delhi.
“The delay in conducting the surveys for those who were left is because the TVC members took a biased approach and disrupted the process. Certificates of vending have been issued to over 15,000 vendors after the previous surveys. However, the vending zones are in the process of being identified and this can be issued only when a fresh TVC is formed. For that, we need to complete the upcoming survey and the current TVC will come to a close,” the senior EDMC official said.
According to the data provided by Delhi Street Hawkers Survey, conducted by the government, 76,311 vendors have been previously identified, of which 65,804 were awarded certificates . However, vendor associations had appealed for an extension of the survey period with most stating that the government had grossly underestimated the numbers.
Opposing the launch of an online portal to identify vendors, Arbind Singh, president, National Association of Street Vendors of India (NASVI), said that the civic bodies are placing the onus of identification on the vendor.
He added, “Anybody can go apply on this portal and it can lead to numerous fake applications. The idea of conducting a survey was brought about because many non-vendors have applied in the past. This messed up the count of the vendors, how will the civic body figure out who is a vendor and who is not? This is not a good idea.”
