[Civil Appeal Nos.4156-4157 of 2002]. [Civil Appeal Nos. 4161-4162 of 2002]. A street vendor / hawker is a person who offers goods for sale to the public at large without having a permanent structure / place for his activities. Some street vendors / hawkers are stationary in the sense that they occupy space on the pavements or other public / private places while others are mobile in the sense that they move from place to place carrying their wares on push carts or in baskets on their heads. In last four decades, there has been manifold increase in the number of street vendors / hawkers in all major cities in the country. One of the many factors responsible for this phenomena is unabated growth of population without corresponding increase in employment opportunities. The other factor is the migration of rural population to the urban areas. A large section of the rural population has been forced to leave their habitat because of massive acquisition of land and substantial reduction in the number of cottage industries, which offered source of livelihood to many people in the rural areas and even those living in the peripheries of the urban areas.
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