Grievance redressal for vendors
A CORRESPONDENT
NEW DELHI: Assam is among the four States in India which have formed the grievance redressal committees concerning issues of street vendors.
Officials in the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs said that Section 20 of the ‘Street Vendors Act 2014’ requires the formation of one or more grievance redressal committees “consisting of a chairperson who has been a civil judge or a judicial magistrate and two other professionals.”
“Only four States – Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Punjab – have formed such grievance redressal committees,” the officials said.
The ‘Street Vendors Act 2014’ institutionalizes the mechanism to protect and regulate vending. The Act states that each Urban Local Body (ULB) should have at least one ‘Town Vending Committee’ (TVC). Currently, there are only 2,382 TVCs for 7,263 ULBs in India. However, 42 per cent of these TVCs does not have vendor representatives.
Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Karnataka and Telangana are yet to comply with notifying the rules of the Act.
Interestingly, a finding of the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs stated Mizoram as the best compliance State with all the six towns in the State having a TVC with vendor representatives “The TVCs, however, do not have an assigned office space and have not published the charter. There are no grievance redressal committees,” the findings said.
The findings said that there are seven TVCs in Meghalaya but without vendor representation. One town has marked vending zones but without a plan,” the findings said.
Tripura has formed TVCs in all its 20 towns but only 25 per cent of the TVCs have enumerated vendors.
Manipur is among the poor compliance States in India as far as implementation of the Act is concerned.
“Manipur has enumerated vendors, issued identity cards, published a plan and earmarked vending zones but all in the absence of a scheme,” said the findings.
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