facilitate the carrying on of private trade or business. If hawkers were to be conceded the right claimed by them, they could hold the society to ransom by squatting on the centre of busy thoroughfares, thereby paralysing all civic life. Indeed, that is what some of them have done in some parts of the city. They have made it impossible for the pedestrians to walk on footpaths or even on the streets property so-called." In the case of Olga Tallis Vs. Bombay Municipal Corporation, (AIR 1986 SC 180) the Supreme Court held that a municipality is empowered to cause to be removed encroachments on footpaths or pavements over which the public have a right of passage or access. In this case the Supreme Court also observed that "In the first place, footpaths or pavements are public properties which are intended to serve the convenience of the general public. They are not laid for private use and indeed, their use for a private purpose frustrates the very object for which they are carved out from portions of public streets." The Supreme Court was also dismissing misplaced arguments resting on life and liberty by those who were claiming occupation of public streets. In this regard, the Supreme Court observed that "�� There is no substance in the argument advanced on behalf of the petitioners that the claim of the pavement dwellers to put up constructions on pavements and that of the pedestrians to make use of the pavements for passing and repassing, are competing claims and that, the former should be preferred to the later." In the case of Delhi Municipal Corporation of Delhi Vs. Gurnam Kaur, (AIR 1989 SC 38), the Supreme Court reiterated the law that to remove an encroachment of a public road is the obligation of a municipality and that an injunction could not be granted to suffer an encroachment of a public place like a street which is meant for the use of the pedestrians. In the matter of Sodan Singh Vs. New Delhi Municipal Committee, (AIR 1989 SC 1988), the Supreme Court did not permit the plea of life and liberty to be raised, in the context, of carrying on trade or business on a public road. It is in this case that the Supreme Court also held that there can be no fundamental right of a citizen to occupy a particular place where he can squat and engage in trading business. In the case of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation Vs. D.Balwantsingh, (1992 (2) JT (SC) 363), the Supreme Court negatived the plea of an occupier of a public street when he obtained an injunction in a suit to prevent the removal of an encroachment. The Supreme Court reiterated its earlier decisions. Removal of encroachment was upheld; so was the action of the municipal corporation to shift the hawkers to an alternate site. In the case of Gobind Pershad Jagdish Pershad Vs. New Delhi Municipal Committee, (AIR 1993 SC 2313), the Supreme Court extended the public street into the verandas in front of a shop which by long user had been used by the public as a passage. Thus, shopping arcades or verandas adjoining public streets were given the declaration of a public street. Encroachment of such verandas in front of public streets was held as illegal.
