For generations of children who grew up in the BW building in Shalimar Bagh, the neighborhood park was more than just a plot of open ground. It was a place where cricket matches extended through summer evenings, football matches continued until darkness made it impossible to see the ball, and games of hide and seek turned strangers into friends. Residents who grew up in the area remember spending entire afternoons there, returning home only when their parents called them.
They say the park has watched the children grow up. Over the past month, the same land has been converted into a temporary parking lot.
The gate remains open permanently to allow vehicles to enter and exit. In several places, the grass disappeared under the weight of cars. Prahlad Saini, 36, 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 spot along the Western Yamuna Canal, where renovation work is underway.
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“Previously, cars could be parked outside next to the canal, but now with work continuing there, the local park has been converted into a full-fledged car park, which of course eats into the public spaces designated for entertainment and children,” Saini said.
A local ranger, who asked to remain anonymous, said: “There are some who voted to use this as a parking space. Then there is the group that wants places for their children to play.” The conflict unfolding inside this small neighborhood park reflects a larger reality in Delhi, where the battle over public space increasingly extends beyond the traditional image of the street vendor occupying the corner of a crosswalk.
From the daily struggle over parking spaces to flower pots placed on pedestrian walkways, from ramps along roads, to garden fences and security guard cabins, the city’s shared spaces are under constant siege. With the exception of green and leafy New Delhi, ironically the least populated area, the city is largely devoid of pedestrian walkways.
Across large parts of the city, roads, drains, sidewalks, and even emergency access roads have gradually been absorbed into an illegal ecosystem of store extensions, temporary structures, roadside parking lots, vehicle repair shops, and storage spaces. Delhi has a road network of 33,198 km – the highest among major cities – 25 million residents, 8.76 million registered vehicles, 250,000 street vendors (of which 75,000 are registered) and five million housing units. Together they translate into an overwhelming space crisis that, in the absence of fair and consistent implementation, leaves everyone scrambling for it.
On the ground, this translates into congestion, clogged streets, late arrivals of emergency vehicles, and increased pedestrian exposure. A study by the Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) found that congestion on colony roads is not only due to high vehicle ownership but to the cumulative effect of encroachments, illegal parking and poor road management. It found that South Extension Part I, Malviya Nagar, CR Park, Bhogal and Lajpat Nagar Part IV are among the busiest areas.
At Maharishi Marg market in Malviya Nagar, researchers noted that roadside parking is a major problem and illegal speed breakers and damaged roads are further slowing down movement. The fire that broke out in a hotel last week, killing 23 people, is only 200 meters away from this stretch.
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“Encroachment in Delhi has increased over the years, adding to safety and mobility issues. Most of the congestion in Delhi can be improved by effective implementation of land use control policy coupled with traffic management measures,” said S Velmurugan, former scientist at CRRI.
In a fire that broke out on March 18 at a residence in Palam Colony, fire engines struggled to reach the scene as parked cars occupied a large portion of the road. A ground assessment of HT using a laser measuring device at eight points found that in many areas, half the width of the road was still usable – far less than what fire services require to operate effectively. While the original roads were between 4m and 10m wide, encroachment leaves only 1.5 to 3.5m accessible. This is much less than the required 6-7 metres.
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 Deputy Chairman which coordinates programs to remove encroachments and action against illegal constructions. The numbers claimed by the STF are staggering but their impact on the ground appears minimal. According to the May 15 report of the STF, its anti-encroachment campaigns have cleared 1,086.06 km of roads/footpaths, 2,922 sq m of permanent encroachments and 524,623 sq m of temporary encroachments this year alone.
In its annual report, the STF claims that 3,748 km of road/footpath length were cleared in 2025, 6,916 km in 2024, 3,968 km in 2023 and 3,993 km in 2022. A senior municipal official, who supervises such campaigns, said that although there are no clear definitions of the various categories of encroachments – temporary and semi-permanent Permanent – Encroachment is anything that is placed on public land without obtaining the necessary permission or license from the municipality. “For temporary structures and items such as vendor carts, notices are not needed,” this person added.
Despite these allegations, the violations resurfaced soon after. Sanjay Bhargava, who heads the Chandni Chowk Sarv Vyapar Mandal, said the 2006 Supreme Court order clearly makes it clear that the local SHO will be liable if encroachments resurface after the removal drive. He added, “The order was not fully implemented. All these numbers are meaningless if the problem continues to resurface.”
Studies prepared for the Delhi-2041 Master Plan document how this process has devastated neighbourhoods. In many unauthorized urban colonies and villages, roads that exist on paper as public infrastructure have become multi-use commercial corridors where pedestrians, parked vehicles, vendors and traffic compete for the same shrinking space.
The findings of the Center for Urban and Regional Excellence (CURE), commissioned as part of the MPD-2041 exercise, are stark. In one of the settlements studied, commercial enterprises have already incorporated public infrastructure. The report stated: “The drains located within the settlement along the main roads have been covered, and these commercial establishments are using them as an extension of their shops.”
The same study found that mechanics work directly from public roads with engine oil flowing into drains, creating mobility and safety concerns.
Atul Goel, who heads joint action URJA United RWAs – a collective body of resident social welfare associations – said the problem of ramps and stairs could at least be solved through better planning. He added: “People are building new homes at higher levels to ensure that the rise in road levels can be managed in the coming decades. Agencies must remove existing layers to ensure levels do not rise.” Goel said people should be punished for placing pots, chains and poles to block parking and traffic outside their homes and the MCD as well as the police should be blamed for it.
Delhi also suffers from a parking problem for its eight million cars. MCD operates approximately 430 parking lots with a total capacity of 51,000 vehicles. Fights over parking spaces are common and often turn violent. In the absence of parking spaces, pedestrian walkways and green belts bear the brunt.
To be sure, Delhi already has a roadmap in the form of Delhi Rules for maintenance and management of parking spaces. Despite the intervention of the Supreme Court, which led to Delhi’s parking policy was notified in September 2019, but the key features of the plan are yet to be implemented.
Street vendors
Well-regulated street vending also holds the key to solving the encroachment puzzle. Typically, street vendors, carts, tables and goods constitute the bulk of the items seized during campaigns to remove encroachments and dump them in municipal squares. While the city has identified just over 70,000 street vendors and issued vending certificates to them, the lack of coordinates and space allocation for vending still makes them vulnerable to such motives.
NASVI (National Association of Street Vendors) said there are at least 2.5 lakh street vendors in Delhi and this is the number one source of livelihood for the economically weak migrant population. “COVs are not respected anywhere. The Street Vendors Act was passed in 2014 and its implementation is still not complete. Designated vending places have not been identified,” said Arvind Singh, who heads NASVI.
The challenge, planners say, is ensuring public space originally designated for movement, access and safety remains available when it’s needed most.
For residents like Saini and those with children in Block BW in Shalimar Bagh, it seems the struggle to reach their local park will neither be easy nor quick. However, like most people, access to such places remains essential for sustainable growth in Delhi.
