BMC mindlessly marking various areas as hawking zones: Corporators

As the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation tries to accommodate more and more street vendors by marking new areas as hawking zones, Cadell Road in Dadar has become the latest casualty of the move. This also means that hawkers will be able to operate right next to the Mayor's bungalow. Of 99,455 applications, the civic body has so far identified 70,000 pitches for hawkers.

Corporators cutting across party lines have slammed the corporation for ignoring pedestrians and asked it to rectify the anomaly. Leader of the House Trushna Vishwasrao said, "The civic administration should carry out a study before declaring hawking zones. These lists are not acceptable. They have cancelled natural and traditional markets and marked new areas. How does this help the citizens?"

Standing committee members said the civic body should first make the list of eligible hawker public and there should be a debate on hawking and non-hawking zones in the city to avoid chaos at ground level.

The members alleged that the current process of haphazard marking of hawking zones is the result of shoddy work done by local ward offices in the absence of proper studies. With slow pace of implementation of the national hawkers' policy, nobody clearly knows where hawkers are going to be settled, they said, adding that street vendors crop up at various places taking advantage of the 'right to earn'.

"The BMC has finalized non-hawking and hawking zones, but is way behind as far as implementation is concerned. At some many places pitches have been marked for hawkers, which clearly is violation of policy," said Sandeep Deshpande, standing committee member and MNS group leader in BMC.

Deshpande said that while most city roads were dug up, the rest were occupied by roadside vendors. "Where will people walk? The Supreme Court had given six months' time for implementation out of which three months have already gone. With this state of affairs, hawkers are only increasing day by day."

Another standing committee member, Asif Zakaria, questioned the survey carried out by the civic body. "Last month, we got the ward-wise list of pitches. The ward offices have done the survey in a non-scientific manner and they don't have any knowledge of various areas in the city. They have shown many narrow footpaths as hawking zones with pitches. However, the rule says hawkers should be allowed on footpaths which are at least five feet wide."

Many of corporators have expressed over not involving them in the town vending committee. "They should publish the list of eligible and non-eligible hawkers so that we will get a clear picture of how many pitches are needed," said BJP leader Manoj Kotak.

Additional municipal commissioner Sanjay Deshmukh said that they would discuss all the suggestions given by members before arriving at a decision.