Residents allege info leak by BMC, harassment by hawkers

MUMBAI: Following HT’s report last week on how citizens who complained about the hawker menace were being harassed by them after Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) allegedly leaked their details to hawkers, several citizens have now come forward in sharing their stories of experiencing similar threats by the illegal hawkers.

They allege that BMC has revealed information such as their phone numbers and residential addresses. One of them is Adwait Malwankar, a human resource professional from Dadar, who said that he was threatened and harassed a few years ago after he had complained about an illegal hawker in his area encroaching a footpath and followed up with BMC rigorously and had requested them not to disclose his identity.

“Despite telling the F south ward not to disclose my identity, they did it. After BMC took action on the hawker, they gave him my name and address. One day when I stepped out of my home in a car, I was surrounded by hawkers and they threatened me to not report this to BMC. They also called up my cousin and said that they will beat me up if I complain again. After this, I have stopped reporting the hawker’s issue, although now the whole footpath is encroached forcing people to walk on the roads,” he said.

SERA Mumbai page had shared a tweet about this illegal hawker at TPS Road, after which its president was threatened.

BMC commissioner and administrator Iqbal Chahal in his budget speech said, “There are 11,000 registered hawkers with BMC and despite that, the PM Street Vendor’s AtmaNirbhar

Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) loan was disbursed to more than 1 lakh hawkers till last month.”

With hawkers’ policy not in place, Chahal had said that BMC will be waiting for the labour

FEB 11, 2023: HT reported that SERA Mumbai president received threats from hawkers after BMC leaked her info to them.

commissioner to formalise the hawkers and only then can they build hawkers plaza and shift them all there.”

He also agreed that the hawkers are taking up pedestrian spaces.

“It is a fact that hawkers are taking away a lot of pedestrian pathways and for that, we are framing the hawker’s policy. The issue is that there is a high court order on identifying the hawkers and we are working on it,” he said.

Prasad Vishwanathan, vice president of Jaago Nehru Nagar Residents Welfare Association, said that he had met BMC officials in a public meeting conducted by Mumbai’s Guardian Minister in the L ward, a few months back.

During the meeting, he highlighted the issue of Hawkers fitting up permanent steel instalments on footpaths and opening a small restaurant sort of thing in the area. Following the meeting, Vishwanathan was called into the deputy municipal commissioner (DMC)’s office and when he showed the photographs of the stalls, DMC ordered the removal of the stall to the ward officer.

HT PHOTO