A Five-Year-Old, a Tanker, and the Constitution
On an ordinary school morning, a father was walking his five-year-old son to class. A tanker struck from behind. The child, who was being dropped to a nearby school at 9:00 AM, was crushed by the vehicle and did not survive. The case wound its way to the Supreme Court as a motor accident compensation dispute. What came out the other end was something far larger.
The Supreme Court declared that the right to walk on demarcated footpaths is a fundamental right guaranteed under Part III of the Constitution — and that this right must take precedence over the movement of motorised transport. By recognising the right to walk as intrinsic to Article 19(1)(d), the Court attempted to restore dignity to the most basic form of human movement.
How Cities Chose Cars Over People
The ruling didn't emerge from a vacuum. It named a structural failure that has been building for decades.
As India developed, vehicle ownership surged after the 1980s and planning of Indian cities became vehicle-centric — with ineffective master plans, unregulated growth, and weak local governments prioritising road expansion over pedestrian needs. The aspirations on paper never matched the concrete on the ground. India's National Urban Transport Policy of 2006 declared that "people occupy centre stage in our cities," yet the investments that followed gave primacy to motorised transport.
The human cost has been severe. An IIT Delhi study found that 1.5 lakh pedestrians were killed between 2019 and 2023 — nearly one in five road deaths. And the infrastructure gap that drives these deaths remains staggering: in most Indian cities, barely 30% of streets have pedestrian pathways. Footpaths that do exist are often encroached upon by vendors, parked vehicles, and illegal structures — forcing pedestrians onto roads and increasing their vulnerability.
The Governance Vacuum the Court Is Trying to Fill
Here is the uncomfortable truth the judgment exposes: there is no dedicated law for footpaths in India, and structurally, there never needed to be — because no one was held accountable for their absence.
Hardly any Indian city has a walkability plan or a pedestrian policy. Since there are no specific policies, there are no agencies specifically in charge of footpaths or budgetary allocations for pedestrian infrastructure.
The Supreme Court moved to close this gap directly. The Registry was directed to send copies of the judgment to the Ministries of Housing and Urban Affairs, Rural Development, and Road Transport and Highways, as well as the Law Commission, to initiate a formal legal framework — and the case itself was re-numbered as a petition titled Re: Fundamental Right to Walk and Footpath.
Why a Law Alone Won't Do It
The Supreme Court has not created a new fundamental right — it has clarified that safe access to footpaths is already protected under Article 21's guarantee of life and dignity, recognising that citizens cannot exercise their freedoms safely if public spaces are inaccessible or dangerous. That clarification matters enormously for litigants and advocates. But it cannot, by itself, fix crumbling infrastructure.
The urban poor are often "captive users" of non-motorised transport — they walk because they cannot afford alternatives — and unsafe roads overwhelmingly affect the most socially and economically disadvantaged residents. For them, the right to walk is not a policy aspiration. It is a daily negotiation with risk.
The Court has handed citizens a constitutional argument. The harder work — funding, enforcement, planning reform — now falls on the governments it has put on notice.
Sources
- Right to Walk on Demarcated Footpaths is a Fundamental Right: Supreme Court Directs Central Ministries to Formulate Legal Framework - Law Trend
- Power To The Foot - India Legal
- Walkability in planned urban environments: Evaluating policy and planning gaps – A case study of Chandigarh - ScienceDirect
- Let walkers have their way - The Tribune
- Road safety: India’s cities are failing pedestrians and riders | CUTS Centre for Consumer Action Research and Training (CART)
- Making Indian cities inclusive means making them more walkable | International Institute for Environment and Development
- Supreme Court’s step to protect pedestrians | Highland Post
- Supreme Court Declares Right To Walk On Footpaths A Fundamental Right, Pushes For National Pedestrian Law | Outlook India