EXPLAINER
The story so far: A 37-year-old Constitution Bench judgment of the Supreme Court which held that pavement dwellers are different from trespassers may become a game-changer in the Jahangirpuri case. The apex court ruled that pavement dwellers live on “filthy footpaths out of sheer helplessness” and not with the object of offending, insulting, intimidating or annoying anyone. They live and earn on footpaths because they have “small jobs to nurse in the city and there is nowhere else to live.”