PM wants a `new deal' for urban street vendors

Prime minister Manmohan Singh today asked state governments to take steps to restructure master planning laws and city/local area plans to make them 'inclusive' and address the requirements of space for street vending as an important urban activity.

Suitable spatial planning "norms" for reservation of space for street vendors in accordance with their current population and projected growth may be devised, he told a meeting of state chief ministers in New Delhi today.

For this, he said, states should ensure the demarcation of 'restriction-free vending zones', 'restricted vending zones', 'no-vending zones' and 'mobile vending areas' in every city/town, taking into account the natural propensity of street vendors to locate in certain places at certain times in response to patterns of demand for their goods/services or the formation of "natural markets", traffic congestion and other factors in view.

State government, he said, should take steps for convergent delivery of various government programmes for the benefit of street vendors such as `Swarna Jayanti Shahri Rojgar Yojana', `Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission', `Prime Minister's Employment Generation Programme', `Skill Development Initiative', `Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana', `National Social Assistance Programme' and other welfare schemes.

The prime minister urged state chief ministers to take "personal" interest to ensure that the `National Policy on Urban Street Vendors 2009' is vigorously and sincerely implemented.

The central government had revised the National Policy on Urban Street Vendors, formulated in the year 2004.