20 prominent spots in Andheri were cleared of unauthorised hawkers and five truckloads of wares were seized from them on Tuesday. But this was not the usual removal of encroachments by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. It was local MLA Ameet Satam, who led the BMC's encroachment removal team around Andheri and Juhu's streets in the BMC's van to crack down on the illegal hawkers, whom local residents term nuisances.
20 prominent spots in Andheri were cleared of unauthorised hawkers and five truckloads of wares were seized from them on Tuesday. But this was not the usual removal of encroachments by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. It was local MLA Ameet Satam, who led the BMC's encroachment removal team around Andheri and Juhu's streets in the BMC's van to crack down on the illegal hawkers, whom local residents term nuisances.
The spots included J.P. Road, Manish Market, Juhu-Versova Link Road, Gulmohar Road, Juhu 5th Road, Vaikunthlal Mehta Marg, among others.
A few weeks ago, Satam had written to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, asking him to scrap the BMC's plan of having hawking zones in residential areas. "For nearly four to five months now, I have been asking the civic authorities to clean these spots of unauthorised hawkers, but no concrete action had been taken so far," Satam told dna.
"Despite several meetings at the local ward level, the BMC failed to take any action on these hawkers. Even a former municipal commissioner instructed the ward officials to take action on the hawkers, but there was no action on the ground," Satam said.
Assistant Municipal Commisioner of K west ward Parag Masurkar said the ward already had two vehicles to deal with hawkers, and got an extra vehicle on Saturday. "This is routine work which we do, today we carried it out under the leadership of Mr. Satam," he said.
Finally, fed up with the civic authorities' inability to take action, Satam decided to take the matter in his own hands.
"In just four and a half hours, all the spots were cleared and all the hawkers' wares were seized. I was personally involved in 7-8 spots, and other spots were cleared off as soon as word about my drive went around," Satam said.
Satam said he plans to keep making surprise visits to the spots until the the BMC takes the removal of unauthorised hawkers seriously.
"Why hasn't the BMC carried out this work for years, which was finished in just three hours today, despite all its machinery and equipment being in place?" he asked.
Residents of the area were happy about Satam's initiative.
Mehjabeen Barwani, a local citizen activist said: "We are happy. The response to this initiative has been good. Now it is to be seen whether the hawkers return tomorrow or not."
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