Can begging be deemed to be a crime?   

The Supreme Court has asked the Centre and the states to respond why begging should not be decriminalized. While Indians are used to see people begging everywhere, at temples and railway stations, at street crossings and outside eateries, not many realise that there is a law against begging; that it gives arbitrary power to the police to pick up people, charge them with beggary and put them away for three to ten years.

The 2011 census put the number of beggars in the country at four lakhs. In all probability the number will be higher. But even after the Delhi High Court struck down the Bombay Anti-Beggary Act, other states have not formally decriminalized begging, leaving the police with arbitrary powers to act.

“Begging” under this Act includes “soliciting or receiving alms in a public place, whether or not under any pretence of singing, dancing, fortune-telling, performing or offering any article for sale”.

This provision is baffling because anyone who has travelled abroad will tell that the sight of individuals playing musical instruments on pavements in the US and Europe are commonplace. Most onlookers and passers by stop, appreciate their talent and pay what they can. But under the 1959 law, it would amount to a criminal act in India.

In 2018, a Delhi High Court bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar struck down as unconstitutional various sections of the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959 (Act, as extended to the NCT of Delhi). This ruling was a result of a public interest litigation filed by Harsh Mander and Karnika Sawhney several years ago.

The Act defines a “beggar” as anyone “having no visible means of subsistence, and wandering about or remaining in any public place in such condition or manner, as makes it likely that the person doing so exists by soliciting or receiving alms”.

It gave immense power to the police to round up the destitute, the homeless and the poor on mere suspicion of being involved in thefts or other illegal activities. The Anti Beggary Act 1959 gave the state the power to put them in beggar homes for periods ranging from three to ten years.

Now the Supreme Court bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan and R.S. Reddy has issued notices on a plea filed by a Meerut resident Vishal Pathak.

The plea, filed through advocate H.K. Chaturvedi, has referred to the August 2018 verdict of the Delhi High Court and says that “The provisions of the statutes criminalising the act of begging puts people in a situation to make an unreasonable choice between committing a crime or not committing one and starving...”. Striking down the law is however only the first step because there is no clarity on how the beggars are going to be rehabilitated after they are released.

The Social Welfare Department of the Centre has clearly back-tracked on its promise to bring about a legislation to rehabilitate them which it had promised in 2017.