Mandatory local ration card for enumeration as street vendor leading to many exclusions in Bengaluru

Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is all set to close the survey of street vendors, being carried out for the past three months, this week. It has enumerated only 27,575 street vendors as on January 3, 2025. Though this is a jump from the 13,995 vendors enumerated in the 2017 survey, it is in sharp contrast to 1.42 lakh street vendors who have secured loans under the PM Street Vendors’ Atmanirbhar Nidhi (PMSVANidhi) Scheme. 

The city’s civic body’s insistence on a ration card from Karnataka to be enumerated as a street vendor in the ongoing survey, has led to many exclusions, especially those of migrants hawking on the streets of Bengaluru.

Street vendor unions are divided over the issue. Street vendor unions have come down heavily on this norm terming it ‘exclusionary’ and a ‘ploy to limit the number of street vendors’ in Bengaluru, even as the street vendors’ cell of the ruling Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) has defended the move. 

Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is all set to close the survey of street vendors, being carried out for the past three months, this week. It has enumerated only 27,575 street vendors as on January 3, 2025. Though this is a jump from the 13,995 vendors enumerated in the 2017 survey, it is in sharp contrast to 1.42 lakh street vendors who have secured loans under the PM Street Vendors’ Atmanirbhar Nidhi (PMSVANidhi) Scheme. 

While under the Central scheme, all street vendors can avail loans, the government of Karnataka has imposed several additional conditions to be enumerated as a street vendor, leading to exclusions.

“Even if one accepts these conditions, the survey should at least enumerate 50% of these beneficiaries as street vendors in the city. The low number indicates the survey is not comprehensive even by these yardsticks,” a senior civic official conceded. 

Sarita, a cobbler hailing from Tamil Nadu, has had a street side stall near Shivajinagar bus stand for the past 22 years. She was enumerated as a street vendor in the 2017 survey and was given a vending certificate. However, this time she will lose her vending certificate, as she doesn’t have a local ration card, and civic officials refused to enumerate her.

She says, “We do not have a local ration card. Even if we apply, there is a freeze on issuing new ration cards in Karnataka. So, we haven’t got one. Am I not eligible to vend on the city’s streets?”