The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has prepared an action plan to remove illegal hawkers from 20 crowded places in the city, which was presented in Bombay High Court (HC) on Monday, July 22.
CSMT, Churchgate, Colaba Causeway, Dadar Station (West), LBS Road, Hill Road and Kurla West are some of the popular congested places.
The president of the Mumbai Hawkers Union Shashank Rao (50) told Hindustan Times that seven hawker associations have objected to the BMC's list of 32,415 hawkers as 10,000 of them in the list are licensed hawkers. In fact they have added only 22,415 new hawkers.
The Street Vendors Livelihood Act (2014) allows 2.5% of the city's total population to be licensed as a hawker. Therefore, Shashank Rao said that the new list is wrong in one more respect.
Shashank Rao said: “This means that over 300,000 hawkers can be authorized, not doing so will not benefit the hawkers or the people of Mumbai. Also the whole point is to organize the hawkers, not to eliminate them.”
The Street Vendors Livelihood Act (2014) also stipulates that elections should be held with registered hawkers, "The municipality has excluded 90 percent of the hawkers in the city by holding elections for only 32,415 hawkers," said Shashank Rao. He also added, "The law itself says that the survey of vagrants will have to be done every five years. They did it in 2014, they wanted to do it in 2019 but no new survey was done until 2024.”
Shashank Rao said that the municipality is also opposing the qualification of hawkers. He said, "On the one hand, it said that only 32,415 hawkers are legitimate. On the other hand, they disbursed loans with approval letters under the Pradhan Mantri Swanidhi Yojana and approved loans to 1.50 lakh hawkers."
Labor union leader Shashank Rao said "If the municipal corporation ignores the existence of most of the hawkers in Mumbai, illegal hawkers will continue to proliferate, which will only benefit the corrupt corrupt officials." He added “I personally believe that the Municipal Corporation has planned the whole thing in such a way that the illegal hawkers have to pay bribes to the officials. And the revenue from illegal hawkers is worth crores to the municipal corporation.”
On July 2, the top court criticised the municipality and police for inaction against unauthorized hawkers and street vendors. The court observed that the roads were opened only during the visits of the Prime Minister and other VIPs.
Also, the municipality and the police should identify the areas most congested by illegal hawkers and implement the Supreme Court orders against illegal hawkers for at least one month. Besides, the court requested the municipality and the police to provide details of the action taken in the last two years to address the issue. Also, the next hearing will be held on Monday.