Hawker licences are unlikely to be distributed any time soon even as the state government recently issued an order scrapping the condition of domicile certificate. Civic officials said while the urban development department issued the order on Monday, the BMC had already received a written notification from the Directorate of Municipal Administration stating that domicile certificates were not required for hawker licence applicants. Meanwhile, there has been no decision on whether to issue the licences based on the old survey or a new one. 

The order from the urban development department, headed by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, was issued ahead of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections. This is a move to woo North Indian voters in the city as now people can apply for hawker licence without domicile certificate, for which one needs to be a resident of Maharashtra for at least 15 years.