For generations of children growing up in Shalimar Bagh’s BW Block, the neighbourhood park was more than just an open patch of land. It was where cricket matches stretched through summer evenings, football games continued until darkness made the ball impossible to see, and games of hide-and-seek turned strangers into friends. Residents who grew up in the area recall spending entire afternoons there, returning home only when parents called them back.
The park, they say, watched children grow into adults. For the last one month, the same ground has been turned into a make-shift parking lot. The gate remains permanently open to allow vehicles to enter and exit. In several places, the grass has all but disappeared under the weight of daily parking.
Thirty-six-year-old Prahlad Saini, who has lived in the area since 2014 and runs a business in Azadpur, said the transformation began about a month ago after residents lost access to an informal parking space along the Western Yamuna Canal, where renovation work is currently underway. “Earlier, cars could be parked outside next to the canal, but now with work ongoing there, the local park has been turned into a full-fledged parking lot, which of course eats into public spaces, meant for recreation and children,” Saini said.
A local security guard, who requested anonymity, said the change has sharply divided residents. “There are some who were vocal for this to be used as a parking space. Then, there is the group which wants spaces for their children to play,” he said.
The dispute unfolding inside this small neighbourhood park reflects a much larger reality across Delhi, where the battle for public spaces increasingly extends far beyond the traditional image of a hawker occupying a corner of a footpath. The national capital’s encroachment problem today cuts across class and social divides. From the daily tussle over parking vehicles to flower pots placed neatly on footpaths, and from ramps extending onto roads to garden fences and security guard cabins, the city’s common spaces are under constant siege. Barring the leafy and green New Delhi area, ironically, the district with the least population density in the region, the national capital is largely devoid of walkable footpaths.
Across large parts of the city, roads, drains, pavements, even emergency access routes have gradually been absorbed into a parallel, and illegal ecosystem of shop extensions, makeshift structures, roadside parking, vehicle repair workshops, and storage spaces. Delhi has a 33,198km-long of road network – the highest among metropolitan cities in India, more than the road network of Bengaluru, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai and Mumbai combined –25 million residents, 8.76 million registered vehicles, 250,000 street vendors (of which 75,000 are registered) and over five million dwelling units. Together, they translate into one overwhelming space crisis and, in the absence of fair and consistent enforcement, leave everyone jostling for it.
On ground, this translates into traffic jams, clogged streets, emergency vehicles reaching late, and the increased vulnerability of pedestrians and commuters. A Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) study that examined more than 60 internal roads across Delhi found that congestion on colony roads was being driven not merely by rising vehicle ownership but by the cumulative impact of encroachments, illegal parking and poor road management. “Poor maintenance, roadside parking and encroachment often lead to congestion on internal roads,” it underlined.
It found South Extension Part-I, Malviya Nagar, CR Park, Bhogal and Lajpat Nagar Part-IV among the city’s most congested localities. In Malviya Nagar’s Maharishi Marg market, researchers observed that roadside parking is a major problem and that illegal speed breakers and damaged roads further slowed movement. The fire in a hotel last week that killed 23 people is barely a couple of lanes or about 200 metres from this stretch.
According to former CRRI scientist S Velmurugan, “Encroachment in Delhi has only increased over the years, adding to safety and mobility issues. Most of Delhi’s congestion can be improved if strict action is taken against encroachment. The roads get narrow and do not have space to accommodate vehicles. The situation can be improved through effective enforcement of land-use control policy along with traffic management measures such as parking restrictions and one-way circulation plans.”
In the March 18 fire at a four-storey residence in Delhi’s Palam Colony, fire tenders struggled to reach the scene with parked cars occupying a major portion of the approach road. Similar worries have been expressed in recent fire incidents in Gandhi Nagar, Hauz Khas, and Mukherjee Nagar.
An HT ground assessment carried out using a laser measurement device across eight locations across west, south and east Delhi in April also found that, in several localities, barely half the road width remains usable — far below what fire tenders require to operate effectively.
Rampant encroachments, unregulated parking, and congested neighbourhoods are increasingly hindering fire response across Delhi. The additional difficulties in accessing incident sites delay timely rescue and can increase the chances of fatalities and critical injuries. The survey found that, while the original carriageway widths in many areas range between 4 and 10 metres, encroachment leaves barely 1.5 to 3.5m of that space accessible. This is far below the 6-7m required for fire tenders to operate effectively.
How does the law define an encroachment?
Sections 321 and 322 of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act 1957 state: “No person shall, except with the permission of the Commissioner and on payment of such fee as he in each case thinks fit, place or deposit upon any street, or upon any open channel, drain or well in any street or upon any public place any stall, chair, bench, box, ladder, bale or other thing whatsoever so as to form an obstruction thereto or encroachment thereon.” The problem is so rampant the Supreme Court has on multiple occasions admonished Delhi’s agencies over their failure to execute the law.
In April 2018, the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs set up a 15-member inter- agency Special Task force (STF) headed by the DDA vice-chairman which co-ordinates encroachment removal programs and action against illegal constructions in the city. The numbers claimed by STF are staggering but the impact on ground seems minimal.
According to the May 15 report of STF, its anti-encroachment drives have cleared 1,086.06 km of road/footpath lengths, 2,922 sqm of permanent and 524,623 sqm of temporary encroachments this year alone. In its annual report, STF claims 3,748km of road/footpath length was cleared in 2025, 6,916km in 2024, 3,968km in 2023 and 3,993km in 2022. In the first five months of this year alone, it claims to have removed 39,960 carts, counters, cabins etc from public spaces along with 8,089 vehicles and issued 34,000 challans.
A senior municipal official, who supervises such drives, said that while there are no clear-cut definitions of the various categories of encroachments – temporary, semi-permanent and permanent — an encroachment is anything that has been placed on public land without taking requisite permission or licence from the municipality. “For permanent structures, we issue 72-hour notices but for temporary structures and items such as vendor carts, no notices are required,” this person added, asking not to be named. Despite the claims of several hundred kilometres of roads and footpaths being cleared every month, encroachments reappear shortly after such drives. Sanjay Bhargava, who heads Chandni Chowk Sarv Vyapar Mandal, said that a 2006 order by Supreme Court clearly outlines that the local SHO (station house officer) will be responsible if encroachments reappear after an encroachment removal drive has been carried out by corporation. “The order was not fully implemented in all these years. All these figures are pointless if the problem continues to reappear,” he added.
Studies prepared for the Master Plan Delhi-2041 document how this process has ruined neighbourhoods across the city. In many unauthorized colonies and urban villages, roads that exist on paper as public infrastructure now function as mixed-use commercial corridors where pedestrians, parked vehicles, vendors and moving traffic compete for the same shrinking space.
The findings of the Centre for Urban and Regional Excellence (CURE), commissioned as part of the MPD-2041 exercise, are stark.
In its assessment of unauthorized colonies, the report notes, “Mobility has become inconvenient and congested due to on-street parking and encroachments and none of the roads are fit for pedestrian use… because of the absence of footpaths, open drains, parked vehicles and continuous traffic movement… Street vending and makeshift shops have become prominent features of many neighbourhoods and narrow roads and commercial activities with encroachment on roads adds more to the congestion.”
In one settlement surveyed by researchers, commercial establishments had effectively annexed public infrastructure. “Drains within the settlement along the arterial roads have been covered and are being used by these commercial establishments as an extension to their shops,” the report states.
The same study found mechanics operating directly from public roads, with repair activities spilling onto carriageways and motor oil flowing into drains, creating both mobility and safety concerns. In several of these areas, public land intended for circulation and community use has gradually been re-purposed. Vacant plots are used for parking, footpaths have disappeared under commercial activity, drains have been built over and roads have become loading bays for warehouses, repair shops and markets.
Atul Goel, who heads URJA United RWAs Joint Action – a collective body of resident welfare associations – said the issue of ramps and stairs at least can be sorted out by better planning and road construction. “People build a new house at higher levels to ensure that the rise in road levels can be managed in coming decades. The agencies should remove the existing layers to ensure the levels do not rise. Even in the sanctioned building plans, the ramps should be inside the plot line not on road,” he added.
Goel said that people must be penalized for putting pots, chains and poles to prevent parking and passage outside their homes and MCD as well as the police needs to be blamed for it. “The bigger properties, who need to deploy guards can accommodate it inside the property but at community level some relaxation can be provided,” he added.
Delhi also has a parking problem with its eight million vehicles. MCD operates approximately 430 car parking lots which have a combined capacity for about 51,000 vehicles. Fights over parking spaces in congested neighbourhoods are common and often turn violent. In absence of parking space, the footpaths and its green belts bear the brunt.
To be sure, Delhi already has a roadmap in place in the form Delhi Maintenance and Management of Parking Places Rules. Despite the direct intervention of the Supreme Court, leading to notification of Delhi’s parking policy in September 2019, key features of the plan are yet to be implemented. The civic body has largely failed to implement local parking area management plans in the residential and commercial sections of the city which were part of the parking policy of the city.
Street Vendors
Well-regulated street vending also holds a key to solving the encroachment riddle. Typically, street vendors and carts, tables, wares constitute the largest chunk of items seized during the encroachment removal drives and dumped in municipal yards. While the city has identified just over 70,000 street vendors and COVs (certificates of vending) have been issued to them, the lack of co-ordinates and space allocation for vending still makes them vulnerable to such drives.
NASVI (National Association for Street Vendors) has argued that there are at least 2.5 lakh street vendors in Delhi and this is the first source of livelihood for economically vulnerable migrant populations.
“COVs are not being respected anywhere in Delhi. Street Vendors Act was passed in 2014 and still the process of implementing it has not been completed. Designated vending spaces are not marked. The city has grown immensely but we continue to hold a few thousand tehbazari holders as legitimate vendors. Even the act estimates the minimum level of street vendors to be 2.5% of city’s population,” Arvind Singh, who heads NASVI said.
As Delhi records a rise in fire-related fatalities and emergency incidents, planners and transport experts say the city is increasingly confronting a problem that extends beyond individual buildings. The challenge lies in ensuring that public space originally meant for movement, access and safety remains available when it is needed most.
For residents like Saini and those with children in Shalimar Bagh’s BW block, it appears the tussle to access their local park will not come easy, nor quickly. However, like most residents across the city – access to such spaces remains essential to Delhi’s growth in a sustainable way.
