Maniyar Iliyaz v. P. Ayyappan (2026): the Supreme Court declares a fundamental right to walk on demarcated footpaths

Few judgments begin with a father dropping his five-year-old son at school. In Maniyar Iliyaz @ Shaik Riyaz v. P. Ayyappan, decided on 19 June 2026, a Bench of Justices Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha (who authored the opinion) and Atul S. Chandurkar took an ordinary motor-accident compensation appeal and used it to declare something the Constitution had, in the Court's view, always guaranteed but the country had failed to secure: a fundamental right to walk. The boy was struck from behind by a tanker while walking to a neighbourhood school on a road that had, in the Court's plain words, "neither a footpath nor a pedestrian crossing."

From a compensation appeal to a constitutional declaration

The litigation began as a claim under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988. The father sought ₹25,00,000. The Motor Accidents Claims Tribunal, by an award dated 30 May 2016, granted ₹7,82,000 with interest at 6% per annum. On cross-appeals, the High Court dismissed the claimant's appeal, allowed the insurer's, and reduced the compensation to ₹4,70,000. It was this reduction that brought the matter to the Supreme Court.

The Court could have confined itself to recomputing the award. Instead, it treated the accident as symptomatic of a deeper failure — a "rights regime as regards access to roads" that has never properly recognised the pedestrian. The Motor Vehicles Act, the Court observed, was never the statute meant to protect walkers; built around the "vehicle" as its subject, it treats human interests as merely incidental, something a driver must avoid violating "and no further." Even the Motor Vehicles (Driving) Regulations, 2017, which acknowledge pedestrians as road users, were held to be no more than guiding principles for drivers, neither recognising a right to walk nor prioritising the footpath over the road.

The reasoning: walking as a right that precedes wheels

The constitutional anchor is Article 19(1)(d) — the right of all citizens "to move freely throughout the territory of India." The Court's central move was to disentangle that "right to move" from movement on wheels.

Walking, the Court reasoned, is not merely motion. Drawing on the cultural, social, religious and political traditions of the padayatra — from the Dandi March to the Pandharpur Wari and Vinoba Bhave's Bhoodan walks — it held that walking also embodies expressional, congregational and associational freedoms under Articles 19(1)(a), (b) and (c), and is "inextricably connected to life" under Article 21. The right, the Court declared, must extend to a safe and demarcated footpath, and that right "is primary and shall have priority over movement by motorised vehicles."

A right with a correlative duty

Having declared the right, the judgment devoted its analytical core to the duty that answers it. The Court's model is drawn from how modern statutes give effect to fundamental rights — declaring the right, naming the duty bearers, providing remedies, and establishing a regulator. It cited the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (for Article 21A), the National Food Security Act, 2013 (for basic sustenance under Article 21) and the Right to Information Act, 2005 as templates of this "right–duty–remedy–regulator" architecture.

Measured against that template, the right to walk stands exposed: it is integral to Articles 21 and 19(1)(d), yet "there is no legislation." The Court's answer was to locate the correlative duty in the bodies that build and control roads — Urban Development Authorities, Municipal Corporations, Municipalities and even Panchayats. Its formulation is deliberately simple: if a road exists, there is a duty to demarcate and maintain a footpath, and that duty is enforceable.

Crucially, the Court held this duty to be independently actionable. A citizen whose right to walk on a demarcated footpath is violated may seek a restitutionary remedy under the Constitution or under Sections 38 to 40 of the Specific Relief Act, 1963 — provisions for the enforcement of public duties — against the offending local body. That remedy, the Court stressed, is distinct from and independent of any claim under the Motor Vehicles Act.

The compensation, recomputed

Returning to the facts, the Court held that the High Court had erred in reducing the award. Following its recent decision in Karuna Parmar v. Prakash Sinha (2025 INSC 1244), which involved a six-year-old deceased minor, it fixed the child's notional income by reference to the Minimum Wages Act, 1948 — a daily wage of ₹223, a monthly income of ₹6,690 and an annual income of ₹80,280. Adding 40% for future prospects and deducting 50% for personal expenses yielded an annual loss of dependency of ₹56,196; a multiplier of 18 produced a loss of dependency of ₹10,11,528.

To that the Court added ₹96,800 for loss of consortium, ₹18,150 for loss of estate and ₹18,150 for funeral expenses, arriving at a total of ₹11,44,628, payable within two months. The recomputation is a useful reminder that even in cases about deep constitutional questions, the concrete relief still runs through the settled arithmetic of motor-accident jurisprudence.

Converting the case into an Article 32 petition

The most striking procedural feature comes at the end. Having declared the right, the Court directed the Registry to re-number the case as a petition under Article 32, changing the cause title to Re: Fundamental Right to Walk and Footpath. It impleaded the Government of India, through the Ministries of Housing and Urban Affairs, Rural Development, and Road Transport and Highways, as a party in person, and requested Additional Solicitor General K.M. Nataraj to assist. Copies of the judgment were directed to those three Ministries "to reflect on the compelling necessity" of a legal framework, and to the Law Commission for examining a statute that would declare the right, identify the duty bearers, provide remedies and establish a full-time regulator. The Court also recorded the assistance of amicus curiae Mr. Mamidipudi V. Mukunda.

Why it matters — and how far it goes

The declarations in paragraph 20 are broad: the right to walk is a fundamental right integral to Article 19(1)(d) read with Articles 19(1)(a)–(c) and 21; footpaths carry a correlative, enforceable duty on urban and local bodies; and violations attract constitutional and legal remedies independent of the Motor Vehicles Act. If followed and built upon, this reasoning could reshape how Indian courts approach pedestrian infrastructure, treating the absence of a footpath not as a planning shortfall but as a rights violation.

That said, the decision should be read with care. The core dispute before the Bench was a compensation appeal; the fundamental-right declaration is directional and programmatic, and the Article 32 conversion, the impleadment of the Ministries and the Law Commission reference are all forward-looking steps aimed at building a framework that does not yet exist. No statute has been enacted, and the regulator the Court envisages remains an aspiration. The right is best understood as one the Court has declared and set in motion, not as codified law with a settled enforcement machinery. Its practical force will depend on the legislative and administrative response the judgment invites, and on how later Benches translate a declaration of principle into concrete duties on specific municipal bodies.

The judgment sits within a growing body of Supreme Court concern with road safety and Article 21, and its reliance on the "right–duty–remedy–regulator" template gives future litigants a clear analytical route to press for footpaths as a matter of right rather than of civic goodwill.

Related on Valkya

• In Re: Phalodi Accident v. NHAI — highway safety and Article 21
• Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India
• Muraleedharan v. LIC: medical insurance and Article 21
• Oriental Insurance v. Sony Cheriyan: strict construction in motor claims

Sources

• Supreme Court of India, Maniyar Iliyaz @ Shaik Riyaz v. P. Ayyappan, 2026 INSC 647 (Judgment dated 19 June 2026)