No hawkers near Chembur station after BMC crackdown

Around 700 hawkers have been missing from Chembur railway station in Mumbai for over a month, despite court orders and payments to officials. The hawkers, who have been in the trade for decades, claim they have legal protection to conduct their businesses, but the police and Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) continue to evict them. The hawkers are struggling to make a living and are unable to repay loans taken under the PM SVANidhi scheme. The BMC is using a 2017 high court order to justify the removal of the hawkers.

No relief despite court orders, and even hafta to officials, allege many of them who are in the business for decades

Mumbai, India. Feb 06,2024 - Last two months Mumbai police took action against more than 700 hawkers outside railway station in Chembur area in Mumbai. Feb 06,2024. (Photo by Raju Shinde/HT Photo)

For more than one-and-a-half months, around 700 hawkers have been missing from the east side of Chembur railway station. They were evicted on December 22 by the police and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). While they assumed this was routine action, and that they would be able to return the next day, this was not the case.

On Tuesday, the footpath outside Chembur station was scarce of hawkers. A few were on their feet with goods in their hands, or hanging from the fence that separates the shops from the footpath, ready to make a run for it if needed. A police van kept a watch a few metres away.

“It’s becoming difficult to put food on the table for my family,” said a hawker, Azam Shaikh, who used to sell clothes.

Another, Salim Khan, said, “I would earn between ₹15,000 and ₹25,000 a month, but for the last one month I have earned nothing. After that day when the police and the BMC fined ₹1,250 and made us vacate, they’re always there to confiscate our goods or fine us.”

Like Shaikh and Khan, many hawkers on the stretch have been in the trade for over a generation. “I was included in the survey of hawkers done back in 1997 and then in 2014, making what I do eligible for protection as per a Supreme Court order in 2013,” Shaikh said. “I am a member of the town vending committee (TVC), but there has been no meeting held for five years.”

Shaikh is the Mumbai president of the Chembur unit of the Mumbai Hawkers’ Union and has made multiple rounds of the BMC and the police, to no avail. Khan is the son of Manzoor Khan, president of the Jai Hindustan Hawkers’ Union, who has a stack of papers making a case for the legality of the hawkers, including a Supreme Court order in 2013, which led to the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, and a Bombay high court order in 2015 protecting all hawkers who had been conducting their businesses before May 2014. The TVCs, which include the municipality and representatives from hawkers, have the authority to implement the hawkers’ policy.

“Some hawkers here even have the licences the BMC used to issue in 1965, and yet they were evicted too,” Khan alleged. “Every hawker here pays the authorities approximately ₹3,000 every month as hafta.”

The unions also have in their arsenal two letters from the ministry of housing and urban affairs - one dated May 18, 2021, to the chief secretary of all the states and UTs, and the other dated January 20, 2023, to chief minister Eknath Shinde.

Both the letters order an end to the harassment faced by street vendors as per the Street Vending Act, 2014. The first letter makes notes of the complaints by hawkers of harassment by the police and civic authorities. In response, it orders a list of identified street vendors in each area be shared with local police stations. “This harassment adversely impacts their business and also their ability to repay the loans taken under the PM SVANidhi scheme,” it adds.

According to Khan, almost all the hawkers on the lane have taken a loan of ₹10,000 for the first time, some even availing them a second time. As daily wagers, their inability to pay it back - the money automatically deducts from their accounts every month - also affects their credit score. Over one lakh hawkers have been recipients of the loans in Mumbai, with the BMC issuing them letter of recommendations to avail them.

But it is a Bombay high court order in 2017 that the BMC is also using as a pretext for removing hawkers.

Vishwas Mote, ward officer with M West ward, and an officer from the encroachment department said they were clearing the hawkers as per routine, following a high court order in 2017 to keep 150 metres around railway stations free from hawkers.