The SC Has Spoken on the Right to Walk on Footpaths. Now Cities Must Deliver

Most of us learn the city first on foot. We cross roads holding a parent's hand, slow down for an elderly person, and step off broken pavements that were never designed for us. This has become so routine that we no longer call it unsafe; we call it adjustment. On 19 June, two days before Father’s Day, the Supreme Court delivered a judgment that refused to treat this adjustment as normal.The case began with a father walking his five-year-old son to school. They were nearing the school gate when a tanker came from behind and struck the child. There was no footpath to protect him, and no pedestrian crossing to slow the road down for him. The child did not survive. From that grief came a constitutional holding. In Maniyar Iliyaz v P Ayyappan, the apex court held that the right to walk safely is part of the freedom to move freely under Article 19, and part of the right to life under Article 21. Documentary: Why Indian Cities Aren't WalkableThe court said this right includes access to a demarcated footpath and that walking must be given priority in the planning and maintenance of roads. It also names the duty-bearers: urban development authorities, municipal corporations, municipalities and panchayats must demarcate, construct, maintain and safeguard footpaths and other pedestrian infrastructure. If they fail, citizens may seek constitutional and legal remedies distinct from claims under the Motor Vehicles Act.Indian roads have rarely been imagined from the pedestrian's eye level. The law has built a detailed world around vehicles: licences, insurance, helmets, speed limits, permits, challans and compensation. The person walking appears too often only after tragedy, as a victim in an accident report or a claimant before a tribunal.The national data shows how urgent this is. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways' Road Accidents in India 2024 report recorded 4,87,707 road accidents, killing 1,77,175 people and injuring 4,71,441 more. That is about 485 deaths a day, almost 20 every hour. Among those killed were 36,526 pedestrians, up from 35,221 in 2023. Pedestrians accounted for 20.6 percent of all road deaths, the second largest share after two-wheeler riders.A Central Road Research Institute survey had found, as early as 2008, that nine out of ten pedestrians felt unsafe while crossing Indian roads. The Law Commission's 2009 report on road accidents had also noted how thin India's legal framework for pedestrians was: there was no comprehensive central law securing pedestrian use of roads, leaving pedestrian safety to state laws, municipal rules and local discretion. Seventeen years later, that warning still reads like a description of today.Hauz Rani to Tughlaqabad: How South Delhi’s Urban Villages Became Death TrapsThis is where the story of the right to walk becomes more difficult. A child does not walk on a constitutional principle. He walks on a road owned by some department, maintained by another, and policed by a third. A footpath may be missing, but the municipality may point to the public works department; the traffic police may say they can only regulate vehicles. In this passing of responsibility, the pedestrian is sent back to the carriageway.This is not merely bureaucratic confusion. It is also built into the way power over roads is distributed. Parliament could enact the Motor Vehicles Act because motor vehicles fall in the Concurrent List. It could enact the National Highways Act because national highways fall in the Union List. But ordinary roads, local road infrastructure and non-motorised use of public streets sit largely in Entry 13 of the State List. That is where footpaths belong. The Motor Vehicles Act can regulate vehicles and drivers, prescribing licences, insurance, speed limits and penalties. But it cannot, by itself, build a pedestrian city.A challan does not create a safe school zone. A compensation claim does not identify which road stretch should have been fixed before the crash. The Law Commission understood this in 2009. It noted that a genuinely comprehensive national road traffic law would need more than a new Act of Parliament. It would require the Constitution itself to be amended, because ordinary roads are primarily a State subject.The Rich Indian’s Guide to Getting Away With a Hit-and-RunFor most city, colony, market and village roads, the power to build, fund and maintain a footpath lies with the state government and the bodies it creates: municipal corporations, development authorities, public works departments and panchayats. They own the road, approve the plan, release the budget and maintain the stretch. New Delhi can frame policy, issue advisories and support standards, but in most cases it cannot directly order these bodies to lay a footpath. That power usually rests with the state. Kerala shows why this matters. It passed the Road Safety Authority Act in 2007, creating a Road Safety Commissioner with the power to order hazards removed from public roads and direct government departments or local authorities to carry out safety works. The lesson is simple: States do not have to wait for Parliament to make streets safer.This is the clearest limitation of the present judgment. The court converted the case into a continuing proceeding and brought three Union ministries into the matter: Housing and Urban Affairs, Rural Development, and Road Transport and Highways. These ministries matter because they can shape standards, policy and national coordination. But the court did not issue notice to any state government.That omission matters because the duty-bearers the court named are largely creatures of state law. If the states are missing from the table, the right risks are being sent to the wrong door.Road (Non)Sense: India's Traffic Chaos Hides Real Casualties of Rule BreakingThe work that decides whether the next child reaches school safely is therefore state-led, municipal, local, visible and measurable. Cities must begin by honestly mapping roads without footpaths and crossings, especially near schools, hospitals, markets, bus stops and metro stations. Priority must follow risk. School zones and roads where people are already dying cannot wait for beautification projects.For every road stretch, the responsible agency must be publicly named. Every missing footpath must have a timeline. Every school zone must have a responsible agency. The officer in charge must be identifiable. Repair timelines must be visible.District Road Safety Committees, which the Motor Vehicles Act already provides for, can become the forum where this is tracked. But these committees depend on state governments to constitute them and keep them functioning.That is the administrative test of the right to walk. Without that, the right will be constitutionally recognised, but administratively homeless.Explained: Can Fitness Tests of Cars Replace Age as Delhi’s New Standard?The judgment itself says the right to walk is not absolute and remains subject to reasonable restrictions. That standard should guard against turning pedestrian safety into an excuse for harsh eviction drives against street vendors and the urban poor, who also walk, sell, rest and commute on these footpaths. A humane city plans walking space, vending zones and shade together.The judgment began with a child who should have reached school. The Constitution cannot return him to his father. But it can insist that the next child is not asked to prove, with his life, that a footpath was necessary.For that to happen, the right to walk must now travel from the Supreme court to state secretariats, municipal councils and panchayat offices. (The writer is a constitutional lawyer and leads policy advocacy at Crashfree India. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)

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