The Supreme Court on Friday held that walking safely on demarcated footpaths is a fundamental right. The persons walking on footpaths take priority over the movement of vehicles, the court said.
While the freedom to walk is subject to reasonable restrictions, the authorities must ensure that common spaces are not monopolised by persons driving vehicles, the bench of Justices PS Narasimha and AS Chandurkar said.
The court said that municipal bodies are under an obligation to provide and maintain footpaths, adding that the right flows from the freedoms guaranteed under Articles 19 of the Constitution.
“Clear articulation and declaration of such a right is necessary to recognise the correlative duty to provision and maintain footpaths,” the court said. “The duty bearers are the urban development authorities, municipal corporations, municipalities and even panchayats.”
The court added that the “absence of safe and comfortable footpaths to walk on, and even when they exist, their subjugation to motor transport, has been a civilisational problem”.
The bench said that a violation of the right to walk safely would entitle citizens to seek legal remedies for compensation against the authorities responsible for providing pedestrian infrastructure. This would be separate from their right to file compensation claims under the Motor Vehicles Act.
The Supreme Court directed that a…
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