I rarely see cycle-rickshaws or e-rickshaws in Lutyens' Delhi or much of South Delhi. Are they banned there? If congestion is the concern, why are large private cars and SUVs allowed in narrow, crowded lanes elsewhere?

Partly, yes, this is the law at work, and the pattern of it is hard to defend. Passenger cycle-rickshaws are prohibited across the New Delhi Municipal Council area, which covers much of Lutyens’ Delhi. E-rickshaws are not banned from whole districts, but the government has barred them from plying or parking on 236 specified roads, many of them the major arteries of central and South Delhi.

There is a reasonable case for keeping very slow vehicles off fast roads. A large gap in speed raises the risk of collision, and e-rickshaws parked near junctions or metro gates can choke traffic. So far the safety logic holds.

It does not explain the asymmetry. A cycle-rickshaw takes little space, burns nothing, and moves people cheaply over short distances. An e-rickshaw usually carries several passengers. A large SUV may take far more room while carrying one, and it consumes road space parked as well as moving, spilling onto lanes and pavements. Yet the SUV is not barred for being large. It may enter the tight lanes of Shahpur Jat or Uttam Nagar unless a general no-entry or pedestrianisation rule happens to apply, and such car bans stay rare and exceptional. The restrictions fall hardest on the vehicles that carry the poor and earn the poor a living.

The Delhi High Court caught this in the Manushi litigation. It did not sweep away every restriction on cycle-rickshaws, but it held that arterial-road bans needed proper empirical study, and it warned that rickshaw pullers were easy targets for enforcement and harassment.

A neutral rule would start from the harms themselves and ask how much congestion, danger, pollution, and parking pressure each use creates. It might reserve fast roads for fast traffic, build segregated lanes, price parking properly, and restrict every vehicle in the genuinely crowded stretch. What is hard to defend is a system that clears the rickshaw while treating the private car as the default. Delhi’s rules carry a real safety rationale, but their lopsided design and thin evidence leave a serious fairness problem.