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| Format: | Recurso digital |
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Zenodo
2026
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20274893 |
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Table of Contents:
- <p class="MsoNormal">This paper uses the Right to Information Act 2005 as a governance audit instrument to investigate the question of pedestrian infrastructure accountability in Delhi. A series of RTI applications filed across all agencies with any conceivable jurisdiction over footpaths in Delhi produced a documented transfer chain of twenty-plus responses from agencies including the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, the Government of NCT of Delhi, all revenue districts and sub-divisions, the Delhi Development Authority, the Public Works Department, the National Highways Authority of India, the Department of Telecommunications, the Delhi Police, and the Irrigation and Flood Control Department. The collective finding is unambiguous: no single agency in Delhi owns pedestrian infrastructure governance. The paper further documents three compounding failures. First, the Telecommunications Right of Way Rules 2024 permit telecom operators to install infrastructure on public footpaths through an auto-deemed permission mechanism with no pedestrian protection clause. Second, the Irrigation and Flood Control Department maintains approximately 30 kilometres of embankment road along the Najafgarh Drain built for departmental inspection vehicles, which has functioned as the primary access road for surrounding unauthorised colonies for over thirty years with no pedestrian design provision. Third, a documented gap exists between the Delhi Traffic Police Standard Operating Procedure for the Delhi Prahari citizen reporting application and the actual reportable offence categories in the application, which omits parking on footpath as a reportable violation. The paper situates these findings within a comparative governance framework across Bangkok, Indonesia, Kathmandu, and Thimphu, each of which has established clear statutory ownership of pedestrian infrastructure. The paper concludes that the absence of the pedestrian from Delhi's road governance is not an accident of neglect but a structured outcome of jurisdictional design.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Keywords: </strong><em>pedestrian infrastructure, RTI Act 2005, governance audit, jurisdictional vacuum, footpath encroachment, Delhi, Najafgarh Drain, Telecom Right of Way Rules 2024, comparative urban governance, enforcement failure</em></p>