Hawker Support Scheme, 2020

What was the Hawker Support Scheme, 2020?

The Hawker Support Scheme, 2020 was a COVID-19 relief measure of the Urban Development and Municipal Affairs Department, Government of West Bengal, notified under memo number 877/UDMA-15011(22)/7/2020-LS-MA dated 14 October 2020. The scheme paid a one-time ex gratia of Rs 2,000 to hawkers in municipal areas whose livelihood had been destroyed by the lockdown.

The reasoning is set out in the order itself, which recorded that the outbreak of coronavirus in the country had caused loss of livelihood for a large number of self-employed persons such as hawkers. Hawkers were among the worst exposed groups in 2020: their earnings are daily, they hold no stock of savings, they have no employer, and the closure of markets and transport removed both their customers and their supply lines at once. The Hawker Support Scheme was the state's direct cash response to that specific situation.

The scheme is closed. It was framed as a one-time relief measure tied to the 2020 lockdown, and no fresh application window is open. This page documents what the scheme was and how it worked, because hawkers and researchers still look it up, not because it can be applied for today.

Who was eligible for the Hawker Support Scheme, 2020?

According to the scheme order, an applicant had to satisfy all of the following:

• Permanent resident of West Bengal.
• Carrying on business within municipal limits, that is, within the area of a municipality or municipal corporation.
• In extreme distress due to loss of business or livelihood caused by COVID-19.
• No other sustainable source of income.
• Not currently receiving a state social pension or a monthly assistance scheme benefit.
• Only one member of a family could be paid, with family defined as husband, wife and unmarried children.

Who was not eligible:

• Hawkers operating outside municipal limits, since the scheme was framed around municipal areas administered by the Urban Development and Municipal Affairs Department.
• Anyone already drawing a state social pension or a monthly state assistance benefit — the scheme was designed to reach people not already covered by a regular state transfer.
• A second member of the same family, once one member had been paid.
• Anyone with another sustainable source of income.
• Anyone applying today. The scheme is not open to new applicants, so no person, however eligible on the 2020 criteria, can apply for it now.

How were applications made under the Hawker Support Scheme?

The route was unusual, and worth stating precisely because it is often described wrongly. Applications did not go to the municipality first. They went to the police.

1. The eligible hawker submitted an application in the prescribed format, Annexure-A, to the local police authority.
2. The police carried out verification of the applicant and the claim.
3. The Municipal Corporation or Municipality collected the verified applications from the police.
4. The municipal body digitised the application data using software provided by the Urban Development and Municipal Affairs Department, which is how the payment list was built.

The State Urban Development Agency (SUDA) was the nodal agency for oversight and coordination of the scheme across municipalities, with the Urban Development and Municipal Affairs Department as the nodal department. The Finance Department gave its concurrence to the scheme by UO No. Group R/2020-2021/0099 dated 28 September 2020, a fortnight before the scheme order issued.

What the scheme order did not specify

Two things that readers often ask about are simply not stated in the scheme order, and this guide will not invent them:

• The payment mode. The order does not spell out whether the Rs 2,000 was to be paid by direct bank transfer or otherwise; it left the operational detail to the digitisation process run by the municipal bodies.
• A last date for applications. No application deadline was specified in the order. In practice the scheme functioned as a one-time relief exercise attached to the 2020 lockdown and did not continue as a rolling window.

Likewise, no dedicated helpline number was notified for this scheme, so this page does not list one. Queries about a 2020 payment are handled by the municipality or municipal corporation that processed the application.

Where can hawkers get help now?

• Your municipality or municipal corporation office, which is the standing point of contact for street vendor matters, including vending certificates and town vending committee processes.
• State Urban Development Agency (SUDA), the state agency for urban development programmes in West Bengal.
• Urban Development and Municipal Affairs Department, Government of West Bengal, for policy and scheme information at state level.

If you are a street vendor looking for current support rather than the 2020 relief payment, ask your municipality what livelihood, vending certificate and credit facilitation programmes are running in your ward now. The Hawker Support Scheme, 2020 itself remains closed, and anyone offering to get you enrolled in it for a fee is running a fraud.

How to check your Hawker Support Scheme application status

The Hawker Support Scheme, 2020 was closed within its own year of notification, and no online tracking system was ever built for it. There is no portal login, application number lookup, or SMS status service tied to this scheme, because the process itself ran on paper through the police, not through a digital application form. If you submitted an Annexure-A application in 2020 and want to know what happened to it, the only real channels are these:

• Ask the local police station where you filed Annexure-A. Verification was done by the police first, so the station that received your application is the first record of it, not the municipality.
• Ask your Municipal Corporation or Municipality office. Once police verification was complete, the applications moved to the municipal body, which digitised the data and prepared the payment list. If your application reached this stage, the municipal office is where the payment record would sit.
• Check whether the payment reached your bank account or another mode you were told to expect. Because the scheme order never specified the payment mode, the confirmation that your application succeeded is, in practice, the payment itself landing rather than any status message.
• Contact the State Urban Development Agency (SUDA) or the Urban Development and Municipal Affairs Department if the police and municipal office cannot trace the application, since SUDA coordinated the scheme across municipalities at the state level.

There is no dedicated helpline number on record for this scheme, so calling a general helpline claiming to track Hawker Support Scheme payments should be treated with caution. Since the scheme closed years ago and carried no ongoing disbursal cycle, a 2020 application that was never paid is very unlikely to be revived through a status enquiry today; the realistic outcome of asking now is confirming what happened historically, not restarting the claim.

Common reasons Hawker Support Scheme applications did not get paid

Because the scheme routed every application through police verification before it ever reached the municipality, most rejections happened at that first gate rather than later in the process. The documented eligibility conditions point to specific, recurring failure points:

• Business location outside municipal limits. The scheme covered only hawkers carrying on business within a municipality or municipal corporation area. An applicant trading in a panchayat area or an unnotified rural market fell outside the scheme by definition, and no amount of paperwork could fix that; it was a structural mismatch, not a documentation gap.
• Already receiving a state social pension or a monthly state assistance benefit. The order explicitly excluded anyone already covered by a regular state transfer. Applicants who held an old-age, widow, or disability pension, or a similar monthly benefit, were screened out even if their livelihood loss was genuine, because the scheme was designed to reach people not already receiving support.
• A second application from the same family. Family was defined narrowly as husband, wife, and unmarried children, and only one member per family could be paid. A household where more than one hawker applied would see the later application rejected once the police or municipality matched it to an already-approved family record.
• Failure at police verification. Since the police verified the claim before the municipality even saw it, an application could be turned back at this stage if the claimed business, address, or loss of livelihood could not be confirmed on the ground, independent of whether the applicant genuinely qualified.
• Having another sustainable source of income. The scheme targeted hawkers with no other means of support. An applicant who also held salaried work, a second business, or steady household income from another earner did not meet the "no other sustainable source of income" condition, even while running a hawking business that had been disrupted.
• Applying after the scheme effectively closed. The order carried no published deadline, but it operated as a one-time 2020 relief exercise. Applications submitted well after the lockdown period, once municipalities had already compiled and closed their lists, had no live process left to enter.

None of these can be corrected retroactively today, since the scheme accepts no new or corrected applications. The value of knowing them now is mainly for record-keeping: if your 2020 application was turned down for one of these reasons, that is very likely why, rather than a lost form or a technical error.