Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Friday directed the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to verify the claims by the hawkers of Colaba Causeway that they are licensed. Justices Ajay Gadkari and Kamal Khata, hearing the residents who intervened with a plea to verify the actual numbers of licensed hawkers as pavement space remained elusive, remarked tongue-in-cheek, “Residents are meant to walk on roads, not pavements.”
Around three weeks ago, the Supreme Court (SC) restored a petition by hawkers of Colaba Causeway before the Bombay High Court for effective implementation of a decade-old law meant to protect and regulate the livelihood of street vendors.
The Colaba Causeway Tourism Hawkers Stall Union, through its President Mohammed Ismail, were the petitioners before the HC and the SC, seeking enforcement of the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending Act) 2014, a central law. Through their counsel Ankit Lohia, they claimed all their 253 members had a right to hawk along Colaba Causeway, a 1.5-km stretch packed with cafes, shops, and tourists.
Clean Heritage Colaba Residential Association filed a fresh application seeking action against unlicensed hawkers. The Association, through its advocate Prerak Chaudhary, said the hawkers’ association claims to have 253 members who are licensed, whereas “only 79” were considered eligible under a 2014 survey of the Causeway — or Shahid Bhagat Singh Road, its official name.
Residents said in the bylanes of Regal Cinema, Henry Road, Mandlik, Walton, and Maha Kavi Bhushan roads, only 19 were eligible to hawk, and annexed a list they “obtained from the Municipal Corporation.”
Residents said hawkers were, in effect, hawking in “no hawking zones” and not entitled thus to any protection. The HC bench, after hearing hawkers’ counsel and amicus curiae advocate Jamshed Mistry — appointed to assist in the hawkers’ matters — directed the BMC to verify the hawkers’ claim on the number of eligible hawkers and adjourned the matter to March 24.
The residents also claimed Colaba hawkers were violating the law, with some licensed hawkers subletting stalls, affixing permanent or heavy fixtures on the pavements, obstructing pedestrians with stalls more than the permitted 1 square meter dimension, hawking beyond the 10pm deadline, and keeping their goods in metal or aluminium boxes on the footpath, against a 2022 SC order.
They were also selling along streets less than 8 meters wide, hawking within 100 meters of places of worship, schools, police stations, bus stops, obstructing entry to official buildings, selling food without a valid licence from BMC, with no regulation to follow on hygiene.