The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has designated a spot for the hawkers to conduct their business and the process of issuing them licences is underway. The corporation has decided to exclude 4,100 stall licence holders from its hawker plan. As a result, the stall holders are exempt from the terms and conditions of the hawkers policy.
On Thursday, a delegation of stall licence holders met Mayor Kishori Pedenekar and demanded that they be excluded from the hawkers policy. Along with Pednekar, standing committee chairman Yashwant Jadhav and BMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi and the group leaders were present at the meeting. The delegation demanded that it ought to be allowed to conduct business at its existing spot until the next order.
Three spots were selected for hawkers, but now the process will be modified after the meeting with the delegation of stall holders. The process of issuing licences will be initiated by registering the eligibility of the stall holders. A survey was conducted in 2014, after which the process was stalled.
After the 2017 Elphinstone stampede incident, the issue of hawkers came into the spotlight.
The BMC then decided to create a hawkers’ zone and issued licences to the authorised stall owners. The hawking policy stipulates that hawkers will not will allowed to conduct their business within a 100metre radius of religious and educational institutions.
The BMC has designated three places for hawkers in the city and the suburbs. To obtain licences under the hawkers policy, hawkers have been asked to submit domicile certificates. For this, the municipality had served notices to 99,435 hawkers, of which, 51,785 have submitted their documents.
Of the 51,785, only 15,897 were found elegible.
In February, the eligible applicants were to be issued licences but on Friday, the stall holder delegation opposed this move, demanding that they should not be seen as hawkers as they possess authorised stall holders’ licences.
