Street vendors may be excluded from the survey due to lack of local ration cards
Bengaluru: After exactly 7 years, a survey of street vendors is being conducted in the capital city of Bengaluru, and serious allegations have been made that thousands of street vendors are being left out of the survey due to the mandatory ration card.
The central government implemented an act in 2014 to prevent harassment of street vendors by local administration and police officials. Under this, it is the responsibility of the state governments to formulate regulations, conduct a survey of vendors and formulate plans based on their condition, and form town business committees.
Accordingly, the BBMP conducted a survey of street vendors in 2017 and identified about 25,000 street vendors and gave them BBMP identity cards. After that, the BBMP did not come forward to conduct the survey.
Now, the BBMP has again conducted a survey in eight zones by making arrangements to record all the information including the location, photo, and address of street vendors in a separate app. However, during the survey, street vendors were asked to submit a mandatory document of ration card.
This is said to be the reason why many street vendors were left out of the survey.
The BBMP has suggested that they should provide Aadhaar card, voter ID card, bank passbook, family ration card, information of family members, and self-declaration certificate when the surveyors visit. However, the state government has not issued new ration cards for the last two to three years. Some have lost their ration cards.
Some have come to Bengaluru from neighbouring states and are doing street trading. Members of the Town Traders Committee have alleged that those street vendors were left out of the survey because they do not have Karnataka ration cards.
The central government has given loans to about 80,000 street vendors in the city through banks under the PM SVANidhi scheme for street vendors.
However, the BBMP did not identify half of the people who received loans during the survey.
Therefore, it is said that the number of street vendors in the city has not crossed 30,000.
Survey only in big
market areas
BBMP officials have conducted a survey only in the big market areas of the city. The survey has not been conducted in small trading places. Therefore, many street vendors have not been included in the survey. BBMP had said that the survey ended on December 20. The survey should not be stopped for any reason. We have heard from the street vendors’ organization that it should be continued. There is a rule that one street vendor identity card is issued to one person per family.
For that reason, ration card registration has been made mandatory.
Except for the ration card of Karnataka, ration card of any state will be accepted and registered, said Suralkar Vikas Kishore, Special Commissioner of BBMP Welfare Department.
