The corporators had claimed that cooking and using gas cylinders on the street side pose a risk to both life and property and needed to be tackled immediately.
A walk out and a boycott later, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials seem to have woken up to the illegal hawking menace that plagues the suburbs of the city.
DNA had reported on Saturday about five BJP corporators staging a walk out of a K-West ward meet, while another corporator, Rohan Rathod, had boycotted the meet, due to inaction on part of BMC officials to stop hawkers from putting up stalls on pedestrian walks. The corporators had claimed that cooking and using gas cylinders on the street side pose a risk to both life and property and needed to be tackled immediately.
The Removal of Encroachment Department of the BMC took sudden action against the illegal hawkers, not even giving them time to flee. More than 44 gas cylinders were seized by the civic staff. This move comes in the lieu of corporators demanding the ward office to demarcate hawking from non-hawking zones so that neither pedestrians are troubled nor hawkers lose their means of livelihood.
The move was welcomed by the corporators, who hope it would discourage hawkers from putting up stalls randomly. However, they were sceptical that such drives may turn out to be sporadic, and not yield the desired result.
"We hope that such actions continue until it proves to be a major deterrent to illegal hawking. If taken up once in a while, such action will prove nothing more than an eyewash", said a corporator.
Civic officials claimed that they are planning continuous action. "Cooking on road is not allowed as per High Court orders. Also, there are certain criteria where hawkers can be allowed to conduct business. But at no cost they can be allowed to earn their livelihood at the risk of people's lives and inconveniencing them," said a senior civic official
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