The Madras High Court on Tuesday directed the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) to explain whether it had constituted the town vending committee strictly in accordance with Section 22 of the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act of 2014.

Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy granted two weeks for GCC counsel Karthika Ashok to obtain instructions. They said the entire exercise of social audit and publication of street vendor’s charter and database would become void if the committee had not been constituted properly.

It was advocate P. Vijendran, counsel for a public interest litigant, who brought it to the notice of the court that the town vending committee in the GCC had been established under the chairmanship of an Executive Engineer though the Act requires it to be headed by the Corporation Commissioner.

After reading Section 22 of the Act, the Chief Justice pointed out that the legal provision requires the town vending committee to be headed either by the Commissioner or the Chief Executive Officer. Since the GCC did not have a CEO, the committee ought to have been chaired by the Commissioner, he said.

Further, the law requires the committee to have members representing the local authority, the planning authority, traffic police, association of street vendors, market associations, traders associations, non-governmental organisations, community-based organisations, resident welfare associations, banks and so on.

The number of members nominated to represent the NGOs and community-based organisations should not be less than 10% and the number of members representing the street vendors should not be less than 40% with the latter having been elected by the street vendors themselves.

A proviso to the Section also stated that one-third of the members, representing the street vendors, should be women and that due representation should be given to the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, minorities and persons with disabilities from amongst the members representing street vendors.