Deepak vs. Municipal Corporation of Delhi and Ors.
Background
The petitioner, a street vendor with 70% locomotor disability from a 2023 accident, had been surveyed and approved as a street vendor in 2021 near Dalit Ekta Camp, Vasant Kunj, but was never issued a formal Certificate of Vending because the private agency conducting the survey stopped functioning due to administrative issues. When a site inspection found he was not currently vending at his claimed spot, he approached the Court seeking a certificate and permission to vend peacefully.
Decision Breakdown
The Court noted the petitioner's approved 2021 survey status and that the city's Town Vending Committee was about to be reconstituted, and directed the MCD's Assistant Commissioner to identify a specific vending site for him in the Vasant Kunj area within a set timeframe, permitting him to run a stationary tea stall there in the meantime, subject to standard conditions (small gas cylinder only, no encroachment on pedestrian paths, cleanliness, no permanent structure). This arrangement was made explicitly temporary, subject to the new Vending Committee's final decision on his certificate and any city-wide vending scheme.
Lesson Learnt
A person who has been officially surveyed and approved as a street vendor, but never received their certificate due to no fault of their own, can get court-ordered interim permission to vend at a specific location while awaiting the formal paperwork: bureaucratic delay by the authorities does not have to mean an approved vendor's livelihood is put on hold indefinitely.