A Critique of India’s Anti-Beggary Laws – Law School Policy Review

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Tanya Sara George*


Source: LexLife India


The article critiques India’s anti-beggary laws, arguing that the prevailing legal framework reflects a punitive legacy of colonial governance repurposed for modern exclusionary ends. The analysis reveals how these statutes systematically conflate poverty with criminality, functioning primarily as instruments of exclusion and social control, reinforcing urban elitism, while granting unchecked discretion to state actors and undermining fundamental rights. Employing the harm and welfare theories of criminalisation, the article appraises the normative legitimacy of penalising destitution and urges a fundamental reorientation of state policy towards rights-based,
rehabilitative frameworks rooted in dignity and constitutional morality.

Introduction

“The separation between existential realities and the rhetoric of socialism indulged in by the wielders of power in the government cannot be more profound.”

Anand Chakravarti

Begging is often resorted to by marginalized and vulnerable members of society. The government terms beggary as “the most extreme form of poverty” and has stated that long-term solutions are a necessity to better handle begging. Despite this understanding, the country has often taken a unipolar view in addressing beggary by consistently resorting to anti-beggary statutes that criminalise vagrancy. Notably, a total of 22 states and Union Territories have aligned with this approach.

In the first two months of 2025, Indore and Bhopal have criminalised the giving of alms to beggars within their boundaries under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (‘BNSS’), which allows orders to be issued in urgent cases of nuisance or apprehended danger. These laws are often used to ‘cleanse’ India’s appearance during G20 summits. While these solutions might offer temporary recourse, they blatantly fail to address the root causes of the problem and inadvertently result in a vicious cycle leading to more vagrancy.

The present article elaborates on and critiques anti-beggary legislation in India. Firstly, the author explains the laws on criminalizing vagrancy in India and its salient features. Secondly, the author explores judicial decisions on the legal stance on beggary. Thirdly, the author poses a three-pronged critique of the present legal stance, analysing the flaws in the current approach while situating this within theories of criminal law. The critique first targets the misuse of these provisions and the heightened scope for undue discretionary power. Secondly, the author analyses the foundations behind these theories and argues that they fulfil no theoretical objective using the harm theory and the welfare theory of criminalisation. Thirdly, the author argues that the present modus, stemming from an elitist perspective, is targeted at exclusion, invisibility and urban aesthetics rather than public interest or welfare.

The Legal Stance on Beggary

The roots of the present legal approach in criminalising beggary are colonial. It evolved from the European Vagrancy Act of 1869, which was formulated with the intent to preserve the racial superiority of the British as against their unemployed Indian counterparts who were begging for alms. Under Section 109 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, any magistrate was empowered to ask any person without any “ostensible means of subsistence, or who cannot give a satisfactory account of himself” to execute a bond, with sureties, for good behaviour up to one year. As noted (p.6) by Radhika Singh, these provisions oft allowed magistrates to proceed under the garb of selective criminalisation. They could deduce criminal behaviour from social antecedents alone, through unchecked executive discretion (p.19) through the Vagrancy Act. This allowed the British to detain undesirable sections of society, as such individuals did not possess the resources to execute a bond and were pushed into a category of malefactors.

Under Indore’s new law, it is not merely vagrancy that is criminalised; but anyone who encourages beggary by offering alms would also be liable to criminal action against them. The administration has classified giving alms to beggars as a ‘sin’ and requested people not to give. This initiative, in theory, aligns with a policy of the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment wherein they aim to make cities in the country ‘beggar-free’. However, it is pertinent to note that the Support for Marginalised Individuals for Livelihood and Enterprise (‘SMILE’) initiative’s objective is to reach a scenario of being beggar-free by offering adequate and long-term solutions, which inter alia include rehabilitative measures and skill-building programs. Similarly, Bhopal has taken the same approach and criminalised the offering of alms to beggars. The district has also banned the purchase of any goods from beggars. Both these laws penalise persons under Section 223 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, i.e., disobeying an order announced by a public servant, if they act in contravention of the order.

The Bombay Prevention of Beggary Act of 1959 (‘BPBA’) was the first legislation explicitly banning begging. This law was extended to Delhi in 1960. Legal aid did not exist (p.282) for such individuals until the year 2000. These laws were aimed at invisibility and exclusion. For example, Section 10 gives a chief commissioner powers to order the detention of “incurably helpless beggars”. This allows him to indefinitely detain individuals he deems to be ‘incurably helpless.’ Mumbai continues to house these detention facilities, with the police allowed to detain any person they think has no means of sustenance.

Section 9 of the Bombay Act allows for the court to order the detention of the dependant person of the accused, again left to the discretion of the authorities. It is pertinent to note that these laws do not provide rehabilitative facilities or educational or vocational training to help beggars reintegrate as members of society. Further, Section 19 imposes manual labour upon these detainees with no recognition or remuneration in return. Ironically, even in criminal prisons, being paid to work is a fundamental (p.14) right.

Further, the act embodies the widest interpretation possible in defining a beggar. This interpretation is also followed by the Jammu And Kashmir Prevention Of Beggary Act of 1960. As per Section 2(a) of the act, a beggar is any person who is:

  • Soliciting or receiving alms in a public place, whether or not under any pretence such as singing, dancing, fortune telling, performing, or offering any article for sale;
  • entering on any premises for the purpose of soliciting or receiving alms;
  • exposing or exhibiting, with the object of obtaining or extorting alms, any sore, wound, injury, deformity, or disease, whether of a human being or animal;
  • 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

This allows for an excessively wide interpretation of who a beggar is. It grants discretion to authorities to utilise the law as they see fit against vulnerable sections of society. As will be discussed in further sections, these provisions are often used in misguided attempts to clean the streets of anyone in poverty, not just ‘beggars’. This has resulted in a paradox wherein beggars are criminalised for being in abject poverty, while also placing the claws of the law upon them if they attempt to move themselves out of poverty by engaging in accessible self-employment on the street.

A Jurisprudential Lens

A single judge of the Delhi HC in Ram Lakhan v State laid the premise of decisions militating against anti-beggary legislation in the country. The decision arose from a revision petition wherein the judge rightfully observed the abominable regard for human rights given to beggars in India. The magistrate, in the earlier decision, had repeatedly described the beggar as “raising his front pawsinstead of using the right terminology, displaying a scant regard for beggars in the country. Further, the Social Investigation Report had observed (p.38) that the accused was a habitual beggar, a claim he was not even allowed to contest. Although Justice Ahmed could not delve into the constitutionality of the law, he extensively detailed how these laws are violative of Articles 14, 19(1)(a) and 21 of the Indian Constitution.

In 2018, a bench consisting of Justices Gita Mittal and Hari Shankar in Harsh Mander v Union of India declared certain sections of the anti-beggary law in Delhi unconstitutional. The court, however, upheld certain sections, such as section 11, which penalises persons who employ beggars. Arguably, this section is based on the welfare principle and has a reasonable nexus to the prevention of exploitation. Herein, it can be emphatically observed that the court used humanitarian principles to only restrict acts that were presumptivelyharmful rather than to penalize individuals for circumstances they are born into. As noted in the decision, the court mainly found violations of Article 14 and Article 21. As held in the majority opinion in Perka v. The Queen, necessity is classified as a scenario wherein the wrongful act was unavoidable, and it is only if the person has a legal way out that the decision to disobey is a voluntary one. In the instant case, the court noted that begging is not a conscious decision, but individuals are driven to it by necessity caused by extraneous factors, and thereby, arresting them for something they cannot control would be wholly violative of Article 21.

Article 14 requires that individuals must be treated equally under the law. A necessary corollary to this is that unequal individuals must be treated unequally. Thus, the law must have some intelligible differentia to ensure that the laws are implemented against persons deserving of the same, and not others. In the instant case, the court rightly noted that the Act grossly fails to differentiate between individuals who are attempting to make a living by street vending or street performances, in contrast to individuals begging for alms, thereby becoming violative of Article 14.

In 2019, the J&K HC in Suhail Rashid Bhat v State of Jammu & Kashmir went a step further and held that the anti-beggary law enacted in the state is ultra vires the constitution and violative of Articles 14, 19(1)(a) and 21. The rationale of the court was similar to the approach taken in the Harsh Mander decision. The court observed that criminalizing beggary would be violative of Article 19(1)(a). Begging is a form of communication in the sense that beggars, by their appearances, actions or pleas, appeal to individuals for their help from abject poverty.

The classification of begging under Article 19(1)(a) can be clarified by the Spence Test (p. 418) drawn from American jurisprudence. The test holds that a certain action falls under free speech if, firstly, the person performing the impugned activity did it with an intention to communicate a ‘particularised message’ and secondly, whether the activity was such that the observer might perceive it to fall within the boundaries of ‘speech’ under First Amendment. Considering the first prong, begging involves the beggar displaying his miserable plight through words or actions and requesting alms by words (spoken or written) or actions. Therefore, it is intended to inform someone of their plight. Secondly, as held in Craig Benefit v. City of Cambridge & Others, begging is categorised as speech under the First Amendment. Therefore, begging is a means of expressing oneself and qualifies for protection under Art. 19(1)(a).

The legality of anti-beggary legislation came into question again in 2021. Amidst COVID-19, a PIL was filed in the Supreme Court to restrict begging in public places and streets. The Court refused to permit a ban on begging in public areas, noting that people are compelled to beg due to a lack of autonomy and stated that banning their source of sustenance without addressing the root cause of the issue would be “an elitist view”. Rather, the court questioned the state on the prayer regarding the rehabilitation and vaccination of beggars and vagabonds, and on providing them with shelter and food amid the pandemic.

Recently, a PIL was filed by Kush Kalra, a former member of the National Human Rights Commission, in the Punjab and Haryana HC, labelling anti-begging legislation as “antithetical to the idea of freedom of speech and expression guaranteed under Article 19(1)”. The PIL broadly argued that there is an onus on the state to ensure that individuals are guaranteed a minimum level of a dignified life, and they cannot violate this by equating beggary to a criminal offence. The PIL was set to be heard in March 2025.

A Critique of the Law

To elaborate on the criticisms of the legal stance, the author posits three primary concerns. Firstly, she argues that the law is being misused to grant an unchecked amount of discretion, without recourse for detained individuals. Secondly, she argues that the theories of criminalisation do not support criminalising begging, which calls into question the state’s bona fides in doing the same. Thirdly, the author criticizes the legislation by arguing that these laws are inherently made to achieve objectives of invisibility, exclusion and ‘urban aesthetics’ rather than rehabilitation or public interest.

Firstly, as established earlier, anti-beggary laws often violate a plethora of fundamental rights. Existing literature (p.285) indicates that numerous persons who have been detained and punished by these laws were daily labourers who had previously never resorted to begging but were merely present in public areas. Further, there is a significant amount of discretion granted to police officers under these acts to pick anyone off the streets, and there has been evidence indicating (p.36) that it may have been misused. Judges would send (p.38) beggars to detention facilities by merely glancing at their faces without even attempting to establish whether they, in fact, had a means of survival. Further, as noted in the 223rd Law Commission report, these facilities deprive individuals of essential rights such as adequate food, clean water, proper shelter, and personal hygiene.

Secondly, the harm principle (p.59) is a seminal principle in deciding whether a certain act must be criminalised. It holds that an action may be criminalised if it causes harm to another individual. It allows state infringement on a particular aspect of life, only if harm is caused to others. It is pertinent to situate this theory in the context of anti-beggary law as it shows how the law is not used to fulfil its objective of public safety. Begging, if done peacefully, outwardly harms no one. Herein, the legislators have fallaciously criminalised a helpless state of being, rather than an act intended to or actually resulting in harm. This begs the question, what is the state really criminalising, poverty or beggary?

Such criminalisation also cannot be justified under the welfare theory (p.58). The welfare theory argues that the state is justified in pursuing a certain objective if it holds an overarching positive effect on public welfare. However, criminalising begging, with no other means of help, has not resulted in a reduction in begging, as stated in the UP Law Commission report as well as the 2011 Census, which found that there were 4,13,670 in the country at the time.The UP report clearly notes that “the purpose of the act has not been achieved” and classifies the anti-beggary legislation as a dead enactment.

Subsequent to an oral judgement in Manjula Sen v. Superintendent Beggars’ Home, the court constituted a committee (p.35) to study the BPBA. The committee discussed with experts on the law and analysed the provisions of other countries during their task. Their final report unanimously concluded that the act is wholly outdated and needs to be abolished without further delay. They noted that those who are compelled to beg require the protective touch of the law, not harsh penalisation. It is pertinent to note that the report had classified the law as ‘outdated’ all the way back in 1990. Therefore, there is undoubtedly no welfare objective achieved by the state’s purported efforts that continue today.

On the third prong, the administration seems to have conflated systemic social issues with criminal issues and resorted to harsh criminal sanctions without adequate rehabilitative facilities. The modus operandi of the state, as seen in the excessively wide definition given to who a beggar is, seems to oscillate towards these laws being a form of performative governance instead of effective governance, as they are unduly aimed at objectives of invisibility and exclusion rather than rehabilitation and justice. Herein, one begins to wonder whether the state is using false claims of hurt and welfare to hide the problem instead of solving it, particularly in urban areas.

This argument is substantiated by the all-encompassing scope given to anti-beggary legislations that allows for any individual who is not perceived to be of a minimum economic class to be declared a beggar and thereby excluded them from public places. As shown in the J&K Act, this unmistakably elitist approach fails to distinguish between beggars and individuals attempting to make a living. Further, a PIL filed in 2018 against an order detaining ‘beggars’ recently found that children and senior citizens were fraudulently kept at beggars’ homes and detained on the pretext that their Aadhar cards were being made for them. Further, several individuals who were employed as domestic help were also illegally detained. Thus, the lens of elitism is patently visible in the state’s enforcement of such provisions towards the furtherance of hasty attempts to marginalise and push subalterns to invisibility.

The exclusion of certain individuals and their categorisation as less deserving of human rights is a manifestation of societal inequalities and structural violence. As argued by Foucault, disciplinary power operates subtly and systematically by shaping behaviour through surveillance, categorisation, and institutional control. In the present scenario, beggars are seen as deviants who must conform to the societal ideal of a ‘good citizen’.  This is mitigated by exercises such as prolonged detention and disciplining. As evinced in section 19 of the BPBA, persons detained in such institutions may be disciplined by the imposition of manual labour and may be awarded punishment for any breach of the rules. It is pertinent to note herein that there is no quantum of punishment prescribed, and it seems to have been left to the whims of the management.

International decisions also militate against criminalisation, with the European Court of Human Rights having done so twice. Indian anti-beggary legislations also lie against Article 23(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 6(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which explicitly recognise the right to work and the autonomy to choose the kind of work. This is because, under such legislation, it seems that the right to work is granted only if the work is deemed ‘acceptable’. Additionally, the question of whether begging is a criminal offence arose in the Lăcătuş v. Switzerland judgement wherein the ECHR held that a ban on begging would amount to a violation of the right to family and private life enshrined in article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

The present attempts to criminalise beggary seem to stem from an exclusionist perspective, rather than falling under the ambit of a welfare state attempting to rehabilitate a section of its population. Further, it constantly reinforces the notion that being poor inherently predisposes you to a life of deviant and criminal activity, which then leads to a vicious cycle (p.25) of the underprivileged being forced into a life of vagrancy. Therefore, it is neither an adequate mechanism nor an acceptable one for addressing this issue, and policymakers must rethink the archaic approach.

Conclusion

The criminalisation of begging under Bhopal’s policy reflects a broader trend in India’s legal framework, one that prioritises urban aesthetics and public order over fundamental rights and socio-economic realities. It must be reiterated that these laws were premised on a colonial relic intended for class segregation. Yet, Indians still enable these laws, perpetuating the same ideas of superiority. While proponents argue that such laws curb organised begging and maintain public spaces, they fail to account for the systemic factors that push individuals into destitution. The judiciary has previously emphasised that poverty should not be criminalised, yet actions like these continue.

India already has a blueprint for a far more humane approach in the Persons in Destitution (Protection, Care and Rehabilitation) Model Bill of 2016. It outlines a state Act that is aimed at providing protection and administering rehabilitation to the destitute and vulnerable sections of society. It attempts to create rehabilitation centres that provide care, vocational training, skill development, and other necessary services to destitute persons. As a step forward, the bill also has a provision for providing counselling services to such persons at the Rehabilitation Centre. However, the bill has not been implemented in any state.

The law should be a tool for empowerment, not exclusion, and until this shift occurs, such policies will remain mere instruments of social control masquerading as reform.


*Tanya Sara George is a 3rd-year B.A.LL.B (Hons) student at Maharashtra National Law University, Mumbai.



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