Soon, 67,000 street vendors to get ID cards, designated zones in Telangana

HYDERABAD: Telangana may soon emerge as the first state in the country to roll out a comprehensive street vendor scheme that keeps in view the welfare of the vendors and also regulate them in the ever-growing cities like Hyderabad. This way traffic problems can be tackled to a greater extent.
The government conducted a survey of street vendors and identified 67,313 of them.It has already issued identity cards to as many as 63, 372 vendors. The ID card bears a slightly different look. It has the details and photographs of the street vendor and all the members of his family. In case if he falls sick, one of his kin can carry on the business using the same card. In towns and cities, vending committees will be formed soon to issue licences.
Telangana municipal administration department joint secretary V Venkateshwarlu furnished these details to the Hyderabad High Court through an affidavit. A bench, headed by acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan, which heard a plea by G Ganesh Singh, a street vendor, last week, sought the details of the scheme along with the number of pleas pending for and against vendors.
Special government counsel, A Sanjeev Kumar, informed the court that in HC alone 71petitions pertaining to street vendors were at various stages of hearing. Kumar said Telangana would be the first state in the country to firm up a comprehensive scheme and guidelines for the street vendors.
T first state to launch scheme for vendors
Though the central government has enacted the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act in 2014, Telangana is the first state to come out with a comprehensive scheme for the vendors in tune with the Act. They will soon be approved by the legislature, Kumar said, and sought two months time to wrap up the process.
Under this scheme, Sanjeev Kumar said, there would be three zones. At free vending zone, vendors can move freely within the zone. At the restricted vending zone, vendors will be allowed only in designated areas. The third zone is the prohibited zone where no street vendor will be allowed.
The bench said it would hear the matter after the state completes the formalities like forming zones and issuing licences.
As the Act has several safeguards for the welfare of the vendors, they need not be unduly worried about their areas being declared as ‘no vending zones’. In fact, the Act prohibits authorities from declaring existing markets or even the over-crowded areas as prohibited zones. Declaration of ‘no-vending’ zones shall be done in a manner that causes minimum displacement of vendors, the government counsel said.