By Subhash Chandra Vashishth
On 19 June 2026, the Supreme Court of India delivered what may eventually be remembered as one of the most significant judgments on accessibility, inclusion, and the use of public spaces in independent India.
In Maniyar Iliyaz @ Shaik Riyaz & Anr. v. P. Ayyappan & Ors., the Court declared that the right to walk is a fundamental right under Part III of the Constitution and that this right necessarily includes access to safe, well-demarcated footpaths. More importantly, the Court held that the rights of pedestrians are primary and must take precedence over the movement of motorised vehicles.
At first glance, this may appear to be a road safety judgment arising out of a tragic motor accident involving the death of a five-year-old child. However, the Court has done something far more profound. It has reframed the conversation about roads and public spaces—from infrastructure for vehicles to infrastructure for people.
The judgment acknowledges a truth that persons with disabilities, older persons, children, women, and ordinary pedestrians have long experienced: India's roads are designed for machines, not for human beings.
Walking: The First Freedom Guaranteed by the Constitution
At the heart of the Supreme Court's judgment lies a deceptively simple constitutional insight: before there were vehicles, there were pedestrians.
Article 19(1)(d) of the Constitution guarantees that "all citizens shall have the right to move freely throughout the territory of India." For decades, public authorities interpreted this right primarily through the lens of motorised movement. Roads were designed to move vehicles faster and farther, while the most basic and universal form of mobility—walking—was neglected.
The Supreme Court has now corrected this historical imbalance.
The Court recognised that the right to move freely under Article 19(1)(d) is, first and foremost, the right to walk. It held that this right is "inextricably connected to life" and must be read alongside Articles 19(1)(a), 19(1)(b), 19(1)(c), and Article 21. The freedom to express oneself, assemble peacefully, associate with others, access public spaces, participate in civic life, and pursue opportunities for education, employment, and recreation all begin with the ability to move safely and independently.
As the Court rightly observed, the right to walk precedes the right to move on wheels. A safe, continuous, and accessible footpath is therefore not an amenity or an urban design feature—it is a constitutional necessity.
For persons with disabilities, this recognition carries special significance. The freedom to move is meaningful only when it can be exercised independently and with dignity. A footpath interrupted by open drains, parked vehicles, utility poles, broken surfaces, or inaccessible crossings effectively deprives many persons with disabilities of their constitutional right to movement.
The Court's declaration shifts the conversation from traffic engineering to constitutional rights. Roads are not merely corridors for vehicles; they are public spaces where citizens exercise their fundamental freedoms.
Walking in India's Collective Memory
The Supreme Court's judgment is remarkable for recognising that walking is not merely a physical activity but an essential part of India's social, cultural, spiritual, and political heritage.
The Court observed that walking has long shaped the Indian imagination and has served as a means of devotion, social reform, political mobilisation, and community building.
From the vibrant tradition of Nagar Sankirtan, where communities reclaim public spaces through collective singing and walking, to the centuries-old Pandharpur Wari pilgrimage, where thousands walk together in an expression of equality and shared faith, walking has been a powerful force for social cohesion.
The annual Kanwar Yatra demonstrates the enduring role of walking in religious expression and public participation. Mahatma Gandhi's historic Dandi March transformed a simple act of walking into one of the most powerful symbols of resistance against colonial rule. Vinoba Bhave's Bhoodan Movement, undertaken largely on foot across more than 70,000 kilometres, mobilised communities around the ideals of social justice and equitable land distribution.
These examples remind us that walking is more than movement from one place to another. It is an act of expression, association, assembly, and participation in public life.
Yet contemporary India has created public spaces that make walking difficult, unsafe, and, in many cases, impossible.
The contradiction is stark. We celebrate the legacy of padayatras and processions while simultaneously designing roads that exclude pedestrians.
The Supreme Court's judgment challenges us to reconcile our infrastructure with our constitutional values and cultural traditions.
From Compensation Claim to Constitutional Transformation
The Court's response to the tragedy before it is equally significant.
What began as an appeal arising from a motor accident compensation claim involving the death of a five-year-old child evolved into a broader constitutional inquiry into the rights of pedestrians.
Recognising the systemic nature of the issue, the Court directed the Registry to re-number the matter as a petition under Article 32 of the Constitution under the title, "Re: Fundamental Right to Walk and Footpath."
The Court further impleaded the Government of India, through the Ministries of Housing and Urban Affairs, Rural Development, and Road Transport and Highways.
This procedural step is extraordinary. It signals that the Court does not view the absence of pedestrian infrastructure as an isolated governance failure but as a continuing violation of fundamental rights requiring structural reform.
By converting an individual compensation dispute into a continuing constitutional proceeding, the Court has ensured that the issue of pedestrian rights remains under judicial scrutiny until systemic solutions are developed.
The Court has also called for the creation of a comprehensive statutory framework to recognise pedestrian rights, identify duty bearers, establish accountability mechanisms, provide effective remedies, and create a dedicated regulatory structure.
This marks a decisive shift from treating pedestrian deaths as isolated accidents to recognising them as the consequence of preventable failures in planning, design, governance, and implementation.
The Missing Sidewalk Crisis
Across India, roads are routinely planned, funded, constructed, and inaugurated without any meaningful pedestrian infrastructure.
Whether in metropolitan cities, district headquarters, peri-urban areas, small towns, or villages, the pattern remains strikingly similar: roads are widened, carriageways expanded, flyovers constructed, and traffic speeds increased, while footpaths remain absent, discontinuous, encroached upon, or unusable.
Even where footpaths exist, they often serve purposes other than walking.
Electric poles, transformer boxes, utility chambers, parking spaces, garbage dumps, advertising boards, vendor stalls, and construction material occupy pedestrian spaces with impunity. Footpaths frequently disappear at intersections, end abruptly without warning, or are blocked by parked vehicles.
In many parts of the country, the so-called pedestrian pathway is nothing more than a slab placed over an open drain.
This design choice reveals a troubling mindset: pedestrian infrastructure is not viewed as an independent public asset deserving investment and protection but as residual space left over after accommodating motorised traffic.
The absurdity of this approach is visible across our streets, where narrow slabs covering deep drains are labelled as footpaths and warning boards caution pedestrians to "walk carefully" because of the danger beneath them.
Imagine navigating such a path with a white cane.
Imagine crossing it in a wheelchair.
Imagine guiding a child along it.
Imagine being an older person with limited balance.
The Supreme Court's judgment compels us to ask an uncomfortable question: if these spaces cannot be used safely and independently by all citizens, can they truly be called footpaths?
Accessibility Begins at the Front Door
For persons with disabilities, inaccessible pedestrian infrastructure is often the first and most significant barrier to inclusion.
A person using a wheelchair may never reach the accessible entrance of a building because there is no accessible route leading to it. A person with visual impairment may find tactile paving interrupted by parked vehicles, open drains, or vendor stalls. A person with limited mobility may simply decide that leaving home is not worth the physical risk.
As a result, inaccessible pedestrian infrastructure transforms disability into dependence. It prevents access to education, employment, healthcare, justice, recreation, public transport, and community life.
The consequence is not merely inconvenience—it is exclusion. This exclusion is equally severe in semi-urban and rural India, where roads are often constructed without any consideration for pedestrian movement. Ironically, communities that rely most heavily on walking are the least likely to have safe walking infrastructure.
Children walk to schools along highways without shoulders or footpaths. Older persons access health centres by walking on carriageways shared with fast-moving vehicles. Persons with disabilities are effectively confined to their homes because there is no safe route connecting them to the outside world.
The right to walk cannot stop at city limits.
The Hidden Cost of Car Dependency
The absence of pedestrian infrastructure affects everyone.
Across India, parents increasingly feel compelled to hire school transport or use private vehicles merely to drop and pick up children from schools located less than a kilometre away.
A journey that should be a safe and healthy walk becomes a daily logistical challenge.
This forced dependence on motorised transport contributes to traffic congestion, air pollution, fuel consumption, and rising household expenses. It also deprives children of the well-established physical, social, and developmental benefits of walking.
Walking is not simply a means of movement. It promotes health, social interaction, independence, and community participation.
Yet our streets actively discourage it.
The irony is difficult to ignore in a country where Mahatma Gandhi's Dandi March transformed the simple act of walking into a powerful instrument of social and political change. The freedom movement recognised the transformative power of walking. Our urban planning systems, however, have systematically marginalised it.
Standards Exist. Implementation Does Not.
India does not suffer from a lack of standards.
The country already has detailed guidance on pedestrian infrastructure and accessibility through the Indian Roads Congress guidelines, the Harmonised Guidelines and Standards for Universal Accessibility in India, the Model Building Bye-Laws, state street design manuals, and municipal policies. Delhi's street design guidelines, for example, emphasise continuous, obstruction-free, universally accessible footpaths.
The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, imposes statutory obligations to ensure accessibility in the built environment.
The problem, therefore, is not the absence of standards. It is the absence of accountability.
Roads continue to be opened to the public without ensuring that pedestrian infrastructure is simultaneously planned, designed, constructed, and maintained.
No road should be considered complete unless it includes safe, continuous, and accessible pedestrian facilities.
The Judiciary Has Been Warning Us for Years
The Supreme Court's latest judgment did not emerge in isolation.
In S. Rajaseekaran v. Union of India, the Supreme Court recognised the importance of unobstructed and disability-friendly footpaths and issued directions for pedestrian safety. The Court has continued to monitor compliance with those directions.
The judiciary has repeatedly highlighted the lived realities of pedestrians and persons with disabilities.
The Bombay High Court, while hearing High Court on its Own Motion v. State of Maharashtra, took serious note of inaccessible footpaths, obstructions, and barriers affecting persons with disabilities. The Court questioned authorities about the absence of accessible infrastructure and directed them to demonstrate concrete measures for improving access.
In separate proceedings concerning pedestrian accessibility, the Court emphasised that footpaths cannot be treated as dumping grounds for infrastructure such as bollards, utility boxes, and other obstructions that render them unusable for wheelchair users and persons with visual impairments.
The Delhi High Court has similarly adopted a practical approach by asking engineers and officials responsible for street design to experience first-hand the barriers created by inaccessible footpaths, including by navigating them using wheelchairs.
Most recently, the Karnataka High Court issued a comprehensive Standard Operating Procedure on universal accessibility, extending accessibility obligations across public and private establishments and emphasising accessibility as a fundamental right rather than a matter of charity or discretion.
The message across jurisdictions is becoming impossible to ignore: accessibility is not optional.
Streets Must Belong to People
The Supreme Court has recognised that the right to walk is not a secondary convenience but the first freedom of movement guaranteed by the Constitution. The conversion of this case into "Re: Fundamental Right to Walk and Footpath" under Article 32 reflects the scale and urgency of the challenge before the nation. The question is no longer whether India can afford to invest in accessible pedestrian infrastructure. The real question is whether India can afford not to.
Every road built without a safe, continuous, and universally accessible footpath imposes hidden costs on society—in lost opportunities, reduced workforce participation, declining public health, increased dependence, and diminished human dignity. A nation aspiring to become a global economic leader cannot continue to confine millions of persons with disabilities, older persons, children, and pedestrians to their homes because it failed to build infrastructure for walking.
The Supreme Court has reminded us that roads belong first to people, not vehicles. The task before governments, planners, engineers, and local authorities is now clear: every road must begin with the pedestrian, because every journey begins on foot.
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