Streets and Roads (Sections 297–330)

Chapter XV of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957 (Sections 297 to 330, the opening Section 297 having been omitted so that the chapter effectively runs from Section 298) is the statutory law of the road within the National Capital Territory. It answers four recurring questions for the judiciary aspirant: in whom does a public street vest, what powers does the Commissioner have over it, how far may the Corporation regulate private building activity abutting a street through the regular line of street, and how are encroachments, projections and obstructions removed. Read alongside the statutory definitions and the executive structure in the hub, these sections show how a municipal corporation balances the public right of passage against private property and the constitutional right to livelihood.

Scheme of Chapter XV and the meaning of street

Chapter XV is titled "Streets" and contains Sections 297 to 330; Section 297 stands omitted, so the operative provisions begin at Section 298. The chapter regulates three categories: public streets vested in the Corporation, private streets over which the Corporation exercises supervisory power, and the regular line of street that governs construction abutting any street. The term "street" is defined widely in Section 2 of the Act (read with the definitions chapter) to include any road, footway, square, court, alley or passage, whether a thoroughfare or not, over which the public have a right of passage or access, together with the drains, channels, footpaths and adjoining land up to the boundary wall. A "public street" is one heretofore levelled, paved, metalled, channelled, sewered or repaired out of municipal or public funds, or vested in the Corporation. This expansive definition is deliberate: it allows the Corporation to assert control over the carriageway, the pavement and the strip up to the building line as a single regulated unit.

Vesting of public streets and the Commissioner's control (Ss. 298-299)

Section 298 vests all public streets within Delhi, along with their pavements, stones and other materials, in the Corporation, subject to a proviso protecting streets that had vested in the Union before the commencement of the Act. The vesting is not absolute ownership of the sub-soil for all purposes; courts have consistently read municipal "vesting" of streets as vesting of such interest as is necessary for the control, management and maintenance of the street as a highway, the sub-soil otherwise remaining with the original owner. Section 299 confers on the Commissioner the function of maintaining, controlling and regulating public streets, and of laying out, opening, levelling, paving, draining, lighting and repairing them. The vesting in the Corporation is therefore coupled with an operational trust administered through the Commissioner and the municipal officers and establishment. Section 300 deals with the disposal of land forming the site of a public street that has been permanently closed, treating the freed land as land vesting in the Corporation that may be disposed of for value.

Making new streets, minimum width and acquisition (Ss. 301-304)

Section 301 empowers the Corporation to lay out and make new public streets, while Section 302 fixes the minimum width of new public streets so that newly created roads conform to planning norms. Section 303 enables the Corporation to prohibit the use of any public street for certain kinds of traffic, a power that supports traffic regulation and protection of carriageways from heavy vehicles. Section 304 is the acquisition engine of the chapter: it authorises the Corporation to acquire lands and buildings required for the purpose of opening, widening, extending or improving any public street and, importantly, for providing public parking places. Acquisition under the Act proceeds in aid of the wider land-acquisition machinery; the constitutional protection against arbitrary deprivation of property is satisfied because the statute channels acquisition through a public purpose and a compensation regime. These provisions allow the Corporation to reshape the street network as the city grows.

The regular line of street and setting back (Ss. 305-307)

The conceptual heart of the chapter is the regular line of street. Section 305 empowers the Commissioner, with the sanction of the Standing Committee, to prescribe a regular line on one or both sides of any public street; once prescribed, no building may project beyond that line. Section 306 permits the Commissioner to require an owner who is erecting, re-erecting or adding to a building to set the building back to the regular line, and Section 307 confers the more drastic power of compulsory setting back of an existing building to the regular line, on payment of compensation. The doctrine resembles the building-line regulation upheld in principle by comparative constitutional jurisprudence such as Eubank v. City of Richmond, where the United States Supreme Court struck down a building-line scheme that delegated the line to private neighbours rather than to a public authority; the DMC Act avoids that vice by vesting the power in the Commissioner subject to Standing Committee sanction and a statutory compensation mechanism. The regular line thus operates as a forward-looking road-widening reservation that crystallises only when the abutting owner builds.

Acquisition within the regular line and compensation (Ss. 308-311)

Sections 308 to 311 complete the regular-line scheme. Section 308 allows the Commissioner to acquire open land, or land occupied by a platform, verandah, step or other structure, lying within the regular line of a street; Section 309 deals with acquisition of the remaining part of a building and land after the portion within the regular line has been acquired, preventing the owner from being left with an unusable fragment. Section 310 covers the converse situation of setting forward of buildings to the regular line, while Section 311 is the compensation provision, requiring payment in defined cases of setting back or setting forward. The compensation requirement is the constitutional safeguard: a setback or forward-set that strips an owner of a developable area is a deprivation of property that the statute answers with a just-and-fair compensation mechanism, mirroring the reasoning that courts have applied to materially identical Section 305-style provisions in other State municipal corporation statutes when balancing private property rights against the public interest in orderly streets.

Building sites, layout plans and private streets (Ss. 312-316)

Where land abutting streets is dealt with for development, Sections 312 to 316 impose planning discipline. Section 312 fixes the owner's obligation when dealing with land as building sites, and Section 313 requires the prior sanction of a layout plan before land is laid out into building plots and streets; the layout plan must show the streets, their widths, levels and drainage. Section 313 has generated litigation on the requirement that an owner sub-dividing land secure sanction for the internal street network before sale of plots. Section 314 empowers the Corporation to order the alteration or demolition of any street made in breach of Section 313, and Section 315 gives the Commissioner default power to carry out work himself and recover the cost where the owner fails to comply. Section 316 protects owners by giving them the right to require a private street, once laid out to specification, to be declared a public street, thereby shifting the maintenance burden onto the Corporation. Together these sections convert ad hoc private development into a planned street grid that ultimately feeds into the public network.

Projections, doors and obstructions (Ss. 317-320)

Sections 317 to 320 protect the usable width of the street from private encroachment in the air and at ground level. Section 317 prohibits projections such as verandahs, balconies, sunshades, weather-frames and the like upon, over or into any street, while Section 318 permits the Commissioner to allow specified projections in certain cases, typically above a prescribed height and on payment of a fee, so that ornamental architectural features are not absolutely barred. Section 319 prohibits ground-floor doors, gates, bars and window-shutters that open outwards onto a street, a safety measure preventing obstruction of the footway. Section 320 prohibits structures or fixtures that cause obstruction in streets and empowers the Commissioner to require their removal. These provisions are the everyday tools by which the Corporation keeps footpaths walkable; their cumulative effect is that the public right of passage extends to the full notified width of the street, including the vertical envelope above it.

Removal of deposits, obstructions and the limits of summary power (Ss. 321-326)

Sections 321 to 326 give the Corporation summary enforcement powers against encroachment. Section 321 prohibits the deposit of building materials, rubbish or other things in a street; Section 322 empowers the Commissioner to remove anything deposited or exposed for sale in contravention of the Act, the principal weapon against unauthorised hawking and stalls; Section 323 prohibits the tethering of animals and milking of cattle on streets; Section 324 mandates precautions during repair of streets; and Section 325 prohibits opening or breaking up streets and depositing building materials without permission. Section 326 governs the disposal of things removed under the chapter. The constitutional limits on these summary powers were drawn by the Supreme Court in Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation, AIR 1985 SC 180 (also reported (1985) 3 SCC 545), which, while construing the materially similar Bombay Municipal Corporation Act, held that the power to remove encroachments must be read consistently with Article 21, so that pavement dwellers cannot be evicted by force without a fair and reasonable opportunity to be heard, the right to livelihood being an integral facet of the right to life. Summary removal under Sections 321-322 must therefore be exercised reasonably and, where livelihood is affected, with procedural fairness.

Hawking, the right to trade and the Street Vendors Act, 2014

The interface between the Corporation's street-control powers and the citizen's right to trade was settled in the Delhi context by Sodan Singh v. New Delhi Municipal Committee, AIR 1989 SC 1988 (also reported (1989) 4 SCC 155). A Constitution Bench held that hawking on a public street is a trade or business protected by Article 19(1)(g), and that streets are not meant exclusively for passage; the municipality may regulate but not absolutely prohibit such trade, though there is no fundamental right to carry it on at any particular place. The follow-up litigation in Gainda Ram v. Municipal Corporation of Delhi, (2010) 10 SCC 715, traced the tehbazari (squatting-fee) practice in Delhi, directed framing of hawking schemes and zonal vending committees, and expressed the hope that comprehensive legislation would resolve the issue. That hope was answered by the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, which from 1 May 2014 occupies the field of street vending and supersedes the earlier judicial schemes, as recognised in Maharashtra Ekta Hawkers Union v. Municipal Corporation, Greater Mumbai, (2014) 1 SCC 490. For Delhi, the upshot is that the Corporation's powers under Sections 320-322 to remove obstructions must now be exercised consistently with the survey, registration and Town Vending Committee mechanism of the 2014 Act.

Naming, numbering, lighting and dangerous places (Ss. 327-330)

The closing sections of the chapter deal with administration and public safety. Section 327 empowers the Corporation to name and number streets and to put up name-plates and house-numbers, a power that also serves civic identity and addressing. Section 328 requires the Commissioner to take steps for repairing or enclosing dangerous places, such as unfenced excavations or tanks abutting a street, so that the public right of passage is also a right of safe passage; this statutory duty undergirds municipal liability in negligence where a known street hazard causes injury. Section 329 provides for measures for lighting public streets, and Section 330 prohibits the unauthorised removal of, or damage to, street lamps and lighting apparatus. Read together, Sections 327 to 330 show that the Corporation's stewardship of streets is not merely about clearing encroachments but about maintaining a safe, lit and navigable public realm, the positive counterpart to the prohibitory provisions in the rest of Chapter XV.

Exam takeaways and cross-references

For the judiciary or CLAT-PG candidate, the chapter reduces to a few testable propositions. First, public streets vest in the Corporation under Section 298 but the vesting is limited to what is necessary for control as a highway. Second, the regular line of street (Sections 305-307) is the chapter's signature concept, operating as a road-widening reservation enforced through setback and compensation. Third, layout-plan sanction under Section 313 is mandatory before private land is developed into plots and internal streets. Fourth, the summary removal powers in Sections 320-322 are real but constitutionally bounded by Olga Tellis and now by the Street Vendors Act, 2014, with Sodan Singh establishing the regulated right to hawk. Candidates should connect this chapter to the Corporation's broader structure in constitution and functioning and to the revenue side in property tax, since street works are funded from the very municipal fund that property tax replenishes.