Besant Road vendors in Vijayawada on tenterhooks after receiving eviction orders

Of the 257 hawkers plying their trade on Besant Road in Vijayawada, only 57 have valid documents, a survey report suggests. File. | Photo credit: The Hindu

After the eviction order by the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) on Saturday, vendors doing business on Besant Road in Vijayawada are staring into uncertainty.

For more than ten years, business owners and vendors have been jostling for space on the city’s busiest market street. While shop owners pointed out that the road remains clogged with unauthorized push carts, shopkeepers claimed that Besant Road has been their source of livelihood for years.

On 23 April 2025, a public interest litigation (PIL) was filed in the High Court, highlighting the “chaotic situation” on Besant Road and seeking orders directing officials to take action against illegal hawkers. As part of this, a survey was conducted in municipal corporations across the state to identify registered vendors.

While this was going on, in July 2025, a division bench of the Supreme Court ordered that “no further licenses should be issued to street vendors anywhere in the State until a scheme prepared in accordance with the provisions of the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 is put in place”.

After submitting the inquiry report, the February 2026 order ordered the VMC commissioner to initiate measures to ensure that only licensed vendors can operate on Besant Road. Of the 257 vendors identified here, only 57 had valid documents and some others produced them later.

Following the orders, the VMC issued show-cause notices to 170 vendors in April and gave them 30 days under the AP Street Vendors (Livelihood Protection and Regulation of Street Vending) Rules, 2017.

After finding that many of them do not have Certificate of Sale (CoV) and identity cards, the VMC on Saturday issued an eviction order to these vendors.

According to officials, the vendors must vacate their place of business within the next two to three days, failing which they will be fined ₹250 per day.

Now, some shopkeepers who received notices about the storefronts said they were not unauthorized sellers but that their sales certificates were not renewed on time.

Someswara Rao, a falconer, is among those who have received eviction orders. He says he applied for CoV renewal in May 2023 and also paid for it.

“The VMC renewed it only in 2025 and later, citing the July 2025 High Court order, stopped the renewal of our certificates,” he says, adding that while the court order did not mean that a new license should not be granted, it did not mean that the existing certificates should not be renewed.

According to the VMC, vending certificates must be renewed every three years. Of the 170 vendors to whom the VMC has issued notices, only 49 have no documents. Most of them did not renew their certificates and some others paid for renewal, but the process was stopped due to the HC order in July, sources said.

While it is not clear whether the High Court’s order also meant a halt to renewals, the shopkeepers are on the hook and do not want to be relocated.

The VMC has not yet earmarked a replacement outlet for them and until that happens, vendors say they are not taking their carts off the road.

Published – 10 Jun 2026 10:24 IST