New Delhi: The fate of more than 82,000 street vendors is set to be decided soon as MCD has announced the schedule and guidelines for elections to town vending committees (TVCs) in its jurisdiction. Polling will be held on Aug 2, and vote counting om Aug 4, MCD said Thursday.The nomination process is from July 3-10. Candidates may withdraw their nominations by July 13, after which the final list of contestants will be published.Town vending committees are statutory bodies constituted under the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, and the Delhi Street Vendors Rules, 2017. They are responsible for regulating street vending, preparing vending plans, allocating space, and designating vending and no-vending zones within their jurisdictions.TVCs in Delhi have faced significant delays in formation due to time-consuming re-surveys of street vendors, disputes over voter eligibility, and bureaucratic indecision regarding vending plans. Vendor unions also protested irregularities, raising concerns that non-vendors and unverified tehbazari holders were being included in voting lists.The matter is being monitored by Delhi High Court which had instructed the MCD to complete the election and constitution of the 23 committees by July 21.“The previous TVCs conducted a survey of street vendors and issued provisional certificates of vending to 82,333 of them. The new committees will finalise vending plans, allocate space to the surveyed vendors, issue certificates of vending, and relocate vendors where necessary,” an official said.Anil Bakshi of National Hawker Federation said that despite the act being in place since 2014 and survey starting in 2019, it took 12 years to reach this phase. “Even now, only 82,000 vendors are surveyed while Delhi has around 5 lakh vendors…. We expect fair elections and hope that the survey of pending vendors would be done,” he saidEach TVC will have 12 elected street vendor representatives, along with nominated members, including govt officials, police representatives, resident welfare associations (RWAs), experts and NGOs.One committee will be constituted for every eight municipal wards.
