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What is Mumbai without its street food whether good old wada paav or the red stalls dishing out Chinese fare. In tune with the times, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) now plans to add some spice to Mumbais nightlife with khau gallis in the city.
The move, aimed at regulating hawkers in the city, will allow night hawkers to sell food between 7 pm and 12 midnight in specially designated areas in the city. These proposals have been made in an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court by Superintendent of Licence Bhasker Shanker Gholap of the BMC.
The hawkers who are permitted to carry on their trade will not be the same hawkers who do their business between 7 am and 8 pm, Gholap informed court. The hawkers will have to ensure proper sanitation and hygienic conditions at these places.
The BMC hopes that, if the proposal is passed, it can accommodate twice the number of hawkers in the hawking zones.
The BMC has also proposed to relocate over one lakh hawkers in two phases. These hawkers will be the ones whose names figure in a survey conducted by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences/YUVA in 1997.
Gholap said the plan to demarcate hawking zones and non-hawking zones would be undertaken in two phases. The corporation will concentrate on removing hawkers on certain streets and places where pedestrian and vehicular traffic is high.All the hawkers listed in the survey will be issued a temporary three-month licence, and can sell their wares in any of the hawking zones.
The non-hawking zones in the second phase will be notified within three months of beginning of the first phase. Displaced hawkers can go to other roads to conduct their trade, Gholap said. However, around 15,000 licenced hawkers will be allowed to carry out their business anywhere, even in non-hawking zones.
Though BMC guidelines and high court orders rule out hawking zones near railway stations, hospitals, educational institutions and religious places, the corporation has said this will be decided on a case-by-case basis by a committee.
No more hawkers plazas
Having burnt its fingers with Plaza Market at Dadar, the BMC has washed its hands off setting up hawkers plazas to rehabilitate hawkers affected by the no-hawking zones.
The BMC had planned to shift the hawkers near the station to the hawkers plaza at K N Municipal Market.
Though the BMC spent several crores constructing the five-storey plaza, the hawkers refused to shift there or even pay for the cost of construction.
The Bombay High Court has also struck down the idea of the hawkers plaza. The court observed that once the hawkers were shifted to the plazas, they would become shopkeepers with inheritable rights.
Moreover, there was also the apprehension that the hawkers would sell off their shops and once again go back to the roads.
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