Mumbai: Stakeholders split after first hawker body meet

The Town Vending Committee TVC of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation BMC will go ahead with the elections to select representatives for hawkers despite their unions opposing the move to conduct elections among only 32000 hawkers The decision was passed by 10 votes with seven against it in a meeting conducted Wednesday Meanwhile hawker unions have decided to go against the decisionThe Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation BMC was to hold a Town Vending Committee TVC representatives meeting on February 28 and March 21 However they were both cancelled at the last minute and the meeting was finally held at 3 pm at the BMC headquarters yesterday in the presence of 17 representatives including BMC Commissioner Iqbal Singh ChahalThe parliament passed the Street Vendors Protection of Livelihood amp Regulation of Street Vending Act in 2014 following a Supreme Court SC order and the TVC is an important part of it as it is responsible for the allotment of licences to hawkers pitches and overall regulation in the cityThe last hawkersrsquo survey was conducted in 2014 PicAnurag AhireShashank Rao President of the Mumbai Hawkersrsquo Union termed the meeting an eyewash According to Rao they are opposed to the BMC conducting elections among just 32000 hawkers which is merely 10 per cent of the estimated number of hawkers in the city ldquoHow can they represent hawkers The survey conducted in 2014 was faulty and there has to be a new survey every five years We demanded that a new survey be held rather than holding an election The commissioner asked for votes and all seven hawkers unions opposed it But the decision was passed by 10 votes from those who were not hawker representatives We will think about the steps to be takenrdquo he saidAlso Read Mumbai Parking Interface BMC proposes implementation of integrated IT system check featuresAccording to Dayashankar Singh President of Azad Hawkers Union the BMC does not want the regularisation of hawkers and thatrsquos why they have come up with this farce ldquoThe authorities donrsquot want to stop corruption including the collection of hafta from hawkers We strongly opposed going ahead with the election with merely 32000 hawkers selected by the BMC How can the hawkers selected by the corporation represent actual hawkersrdquo he said adding that they will approach the court if the BMC sticks to its decisionNow following the approval of the TVC a list of 32000 hawkers will be published in the public domain for suggestions and objections from hawkers and unions concerned Once the list has been finalised the labour commissioner will conduct the election The newly elected TVC will then decide on the distribution of licences and regularisationldquoI voted for elections because that is the only step to go ahead with the regularisation of hawkers But I also supported the hawker unions when they said that the BMC should recognise the list of 128 lakh hawkers to whom they disbursed loans of R10000 under the PM SVANidhi scheme I will put my point under suggestionsobjectionsrdquo said Vidya Vaidya a representative of citizens in the TVCVaidya said she even pointed out that the state must come up with a proper hawkersrsquo policy and that every city should decide the number of hawkers based on the holding capacity of the city ldquoOtherwise in a city like Mumbai 2 per cent of the population will be a huge number and there will be no space to walk on the roadsrdquo she saidIn India the National Policy for Urban Street Hawkers notes that street hawkers constitute approximately 2 per cent of the population of a metropolisRajan Shetty a representative of AHAR Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association said the regularisation of hawkers is a long process and if the elections are not held the whole process will be pushed tothe back burner ldquoSo we voted for the election but the hawkers have their own side and they were saying that merely 32000 hawkers wonrsquot be a fair representationrdquo said ShettyThere are around 14970 hawkers who received licences in the 1970s When the BMC started a survey in 2016 they had identified and distributed forms to 128 lakh hawkers of which 99435 submitted applications with relevant documents As the state government had made domicile certificates mandatory only 15361 hawkers were found eligible in 2019 Now after the relaxation in the rule of domicile the BMC added another 2000 to the list32kNo of hawkers to vote237Ratio of hawkers to population