Policy Update
Mansi Tirthani
Background
Recently the Supreme Court of India has recognized the Right to Walk on Footpaths as a Fundamental Right under Part III Article (19)(1)(d) along with Article 21 of the Constitution. The decision was delivered by a division bench composed of Justice P.S. Narasimha and Justice A.S. Chandurkar. The apex court has urged the government to introduce a new law that declares this right. This ruling is considered a landmark judgement in India’s existing urban policy space as it placed the pedestrian rights above the motorised vehicular traffic.
The ruling came after an incident where an appeal was made after a five-year-old boy who was killed by a tanker while walking to school with his father in an area where pedestrian infrastructure was missing. India continues to be the top nation in total fatalities from road accidents. According to Accidental deaths and suicides in India (NCRB, 2026) report, 1.75 lakh people died in 2024. Crime in India (NCRB) shows that 1.81 lakh people lost their lives in road crashes in 2024 due to negligence relating to road accidents. Indian cities were engineered in a way to facilitate smooth speed with the expansion of multilane corridors unintentionally pushing the pedestrian to a residual category.
However this judicial evolution took a step to alter the socio-legal connection between the citizen and the city. If compared internationally, walking by footpaths in India is no longer viewed as a default mode of transport, it is viewed that it is utilized only by those who cannot afford private vehicles.
This urban governance shift imposes obligations on the existing state demanding that urban spaces need to be planned through the lens of accessibility, human dignity and more significantly considering urban public at the core of urban public policy. It is necessitating an immediate re-evaluation of traditional frameworks and budgetary allocations. The institutions who will be solely responsible to implement this judgment are the municipal corporations. State governments and municipal bodies must now frame enforceable laws to protect citizens lives without fear or inconvenience.
Ensuring walkable paths seems simple, but it goes beyond rebuilding infrastructure. It will reshape the road designing parameters, socio-economic and land challenges that demand innovative planning and practical recommendations.
Performance
Despite this evolving legal architecture, the empirical reality of walking in most metropolitan areas remains unsatisfactory and hazardous. The current state of footpaths and walkable pathways across urban areas are prey to fragmentation, architectural ignorance and regulatory failure. Fig.1 shows that footpaths exist non-uniformly across Indian states ranging from 3% of total road networks in Jammu and Kashmir to 56% in the capital whereas in states like Bihar, Haryana and Puducherry, usable pavement remains scarce.
Figure 1. State-specific status of road safety Source: India Status Report on Road Safety, 2024
They are often unwalkable due to barriers like uneven surfaces, height variations and abrupt discontinuations that force pedestrians into the path of oncoming vehicular traffic. The pedestrian ecosystem is also blocked by unchecked encroachments. Sidewalks are occupied by commercial vending, illegal private vehicle parking, unplanned utility infrastructure (such as electricity transformers and telecom boxes) and unstructured urban waste dumping.
The root cause of this infrastructural inefficiency is primarily institutional. Under the existing governance framework the municipal corporations treat pathways as an administrative afterthought rather than a core public utility. Street designs carry engineering manuals that emphasize more on carriage expansion at the expense of non-motorized transport (NMT).
Whereas multi agency ownership is also one of the reasons for irregular maintenance where footpaths are constructed in isolated, disjointed patches owing to fragmented multi-agency jurisdictions. A single urban sidewalk is managed by a municipal body, main road by a state public works department (PWD) and its underground utilities by separate corporate monopolies. This institutional unaccountability ensures that the pedestrian experience remains dangerous leaving the public more vulnerable including children, the elderly and persons with disabilities.
Impact
If strictly implemented, the institutional, operational and financial impact on municipal corporations will lead to the following systemic shifts:
Municipalities will face Writ Petitions under Article 226/32 seeking court orders to build footpaths. The Supreme Court has cleared a path for restitutionary civil damages under the Relief Act. If a citizen is injured or killed because a missing footpath forced them onto the road, the municipal corporation faces direct financial liability independent of standard motor accident insurance claims.
Municipalities will be legally forced to shift focus from car centric throughput (building flyovers and widening vehicular lanes) to pedestrian infrastructure. Implementing accessible pavements with national engineering codes will require heavy financial capital. For which urban local bodies will have to legally implement 20% to 30% of their total transport budgets exclusively for Non-Motorized Transport (NMT) cells, limiting their freedom to divert funds to other civic projects. The right to walk forces municipalities to under-ground or entirely relocate these structures, requiring high-level multi-departmental cooperation.
It also transforms the relationship between the citizen and the city. The lack of a walkable path is a direct breach of a citizen’s fundamental rights. Residential neighborhoods will see a heavy enforcement push against illegal car parking, extended ramps and private utility blocks that encroach onto public pathways, forcing private vehicle owners to find alternative parking solutions.
Continuous, shaded, and well-lit pedestrian corridors encourage the public to walk for short commutes rather than relying on motorized transport. This shift lowers personal fuel expenses, curbs air pollution, and combats sedentary health risks within urban centers.
Emerging Issues
The Motor Vehicles (MV) Act of 1988 was partially amended in August 2019, and some of the amended and new sections which made traffic violations more stringent, came into effect from September 1, 2019. Most States did not increase the traffic violations fee. This increase was criticized and people protested on the pretext that the (fine) paying capacity of the average Indian was still limited. Also, only a few cases of traffic violations are contested in the court of law. Therefore, the expected impact of the provisions of the amended law could not be realised on ground.
Informal street economy management is tough. The rights should not come at the cost of making people poorer or by shutting down space for leisure and refreshment. Social interactions and the exchange of news and views are all part of the life of pavements. Street vendors represent urban economic resilience and provide natural surveillance. The unmanaged vending completely hinders pedestrian flow. Municipal corporations face the governance dilemma of balancing the Right to Walk with the Right to Livelihood as it requires geographical rationing and time-sharing mechanisms.
The environment also plays a crucial role with decreasing water absorption capacities. Extending footpaths requires clearing old urban trees and displacing green buffers. This structural wipes off the local tree canopy which adds to the urban heat island effect and further disrupts natural rainwater absorption capacity.
Building new walkways or maintaining the existing ones puts a huge financial burden on budgets of municipal corporations which are already occupied with debts. It costs to buy land, move underground utilities and fix broken sidewalks which shrinks local budgets without bringing back any direct revenue in a short-term.
Displacement and allotment of new places will be a new hunt. Building wider sidewalks means removing street vendors who depend on that space. Moving them to new, official markets is a complex headache for cities, as finding empty land in the nearby areas to facilitate public utilities causes major local resistance and disrupts their daily livelihoods.
Way forward
A walkable environment requires multi-departmental convergence to integrate elements such as shade by restructuring urban forestry, street lighting to ensure gender-responsive safety at night, universally accessible design with rights of persons with disabilities and facilitating last mile connectivity. Urban bodies must stop fragmented working models and adopt integrated management systems.
To bridge the gap between judicial compulsion and ground realities, urban policy must look toward recommendations by expert committees like the National Urban Transport Policy (NUTP) and the institutional recommendations by the High-Powered Expert Committee (HPEC) on Urban Infrastructure Services.
Municipal corporations must adopt the Complete Streets framework as a legally binding development regulation. This framework mandates that no new urban road can be approved, financed, or constructed unless it allot space for pedestrians, cyclists, vendors and utilities within an integrated proper right of way. Their role should not be limited to the construction of pavements but to securing the right to walk in a holistic sense consisting of basic minimum standards of safety and comfort.
References
National Crime Records Bureau. (2026). Accidental deaths and suicides in India 2024. Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. https://data.opencity.in/dataset/accidental-deaths-and-suicides-in-india-2024
National Crime Records Bureau. (2026). Crime in India 2024. Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. https://ncrb.gov.in
Tiwari, G., Goel, R., Agrawal, G., Singh, N., & Bhalla, K. (2024) India Status Report on Road Safety: 2024. New Delhi: Transportation Research & Injury Prevention Centre, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. https://tripc.iitd.ac.in/assets/publication/India_Status_Report_on_Road_Safety-20242.pdf
Maniyar Iliyaz @ Shaik Riyaz vs P. Ayyappan and Ors (2026) Civil Appeal No. 4665-4666/2025 https://api.sci.gov.in/supremecourt/2024/42514/42514_2024_3_1501_71888_Judgement_19-Jun-2026.pdf
Reviewed by
Rakhi Kumari
Manvik
About the Author
Mansi Tirthani is the recipient of the National Award by the President of India for her contributions to community services and good governance. She has been Indian Youth Ambassador to China by Government of India to analyse startup and innovation ecosystem. Currently serves with the Research and Editorial team with IMPRI, where her work centers on evidence-based policies analysis. With commitment to advancing welfare governance she brings together data analysis, strategic communication and development to impact research and policy.
Acknowledgement:
The author extends sincere thanks to the IMPRI team for their guidance.
Disclaimer:
All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organization.
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