Delhi's public spaces are under constant siege, with the city's residents fighting for access to parks, footpaths, and other common areas. The issue is not just about hawkers occupying footpaths, but also about the daily tussle over parking, flower pots placed on footpaths, and garden fences.
The city's road network, which spans 33,198km, is being gradually absorbed into an illegal ecosystem of shop extensions, makeshift structures, roadside parking, and vehicle repair workshops.
A Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) study found that congestion on colony roads is driven not merely by rising vehicle ownership but by the cumulative impact of encroachments, illegal parking, and poor road management.
Despite the efforts of the Special Task Force (STF), which has cleared over 1,000km of road/footpath and 524,623 sqm of temporary encroachments this year alone, the problem persists.
Residents and experts say that the issue of ramps and stairs can be sorted out by better planning, and that people must be penalised for putting pots, chains, and poles to prevent parking and passage outside their homes.
The city's parking problem, with its eight million vehicles, is also a major concern, with fights over parking spaces common and often turning violent.
Well-regulated street vending also holds a key to solving the encroachment riddle, but the lack of co-ordinates and space allocation for vending still makes street vendors vulnerable to encroachment removal drives.
