The Delhi High Court judgment to decriminalise begging in the capital on the grounds that “the state simply cannot fail to do its duty to provide a decent life to its citizens” is a major victory for those fighting against this archaic law.
The court ruled as unconstitutional some provisions of the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959, which the Union Territory of Delhi adopted in 1960, as they permitted cops to arrest, detain and even imprison people simply because they “beg in search for essentials of bare survival”. Observing that the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act does not make any distinction between types of begging, voluntary or involuntary, the court, however, left it to the Delhi government to enact a law to check organised crime in begging.
According to a written reply in the Rajya Sabha in 2015, Minister of State for Social Justice Vijay Sampla said there are 4.13 lakh beggars in the country, including 2,187 in Delhi. But according to unofficial estimates, there are up to 60,000 beggars in Delhi alone, with Mumbai accounting for more than three lakh. The dispute over the numbers is, however, not the issue.
The Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, which many states have adopted, was viewed as draconian as it gave cops discretionary powers to round up people, especially the homeless, on the grounds that they were beggars. Advocates of the law maintained that it helped check trafficking of children. But the situation on the ground was far from it as the law only provided policemen a legal shield to extort money from those genuinely forced into seeking alms.
Keeping this in mind, the Centre in 2016 almost finalised a draft Bill called The Persons in Destitution (Protection Care and Intervention) Model Bill. Under the proposed law, begging was to be decriminalised and the government was to crack down on those running organised syndicates. But the Centre inexplicably dropped the Bill last year even before it made it to Parliament. The Delhi HC has walked where the government feared to tread.