Fresh survey of street vendors in Bengaluru

The BBMP has finally taken up the task of preparing a fresh survey of street vendors across the city. For the first time, the civic body plans to conduct the survey using a GIS-based web application. The move comes after a relentless campaign by several unions which have been complaining about the daily harassment faced by street vendors from enforcement agencies.

On Wednesday, the BBMP floated tenders in a move to outsource the work of conducting the survey to a private agency. As per the tenders, the survey must be done in-situ for the existing vendors without making any announcements. The survey is expected to include photos, registration, socio-economic details and geo-tagging of street vendors.

The last such survey was conducted in 2017 but it did not cover all street vendors. While the survey had covered only 25,000 street vendors, the unions estimate the number of such vendors are close to 2 lakh.

“Conducting a survey is a first step towards the implementation of the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act 2014,” said Vinay Sreenivasa, an advocate with Alternative Law Forum, which works with street vendors.

“The previous survey had excluded a large number of street vendors,” he said. “The survey is needed to understand the number of street vendors and the places where they are conducting business. It also provides a base to create street-vending zones.”

S Babu, president, Federation of Bengaluru District Street Vendors Union, urged the BBMP to undertake such a survey by strengthening its in-house team. “Outsourcing the work to a private agency could provide avenues for misuse. If there is any exclusion of street vendors, it will be easier to approach the BBMP than a private agency,” he said.

Palanna, president of Karnataka State Raste Badi Vyaparigala Maha Mandala, said the BBMP’s previous survey had only covered seven of the eight BBMP zones. “No survey of street vendors was done in Bommanahalli. This has caused a lot of harassment. The BBMP has not even issued identity cards for the street vendors.”