Several complainants allege they were harassed by hawkers after BMC leaked their details

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

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.

“Hawkers do not have Twitter accounts, so of course, my information was leaked by the G north ward officials to the hawkers. Not only BMC, but even local police stations also tried to intimidate me after hawkers reached them for help so that I would stop complaining.” (HT Photo)

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.

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 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.

“BMC came and took action, but after that, I was confronted by a few hawkers from the area who exactly mentioned what I said in the meeting and how I had shown pictures of the stall to the DMC. How did the hawkers know what I spoke with BMC officials? It is obvious the BMC leaked my information to the hawkers.” he said.

Urich Kamath, a member of the citizen welfare forum called Mumbai North Central District Forum, said, “Because I have complained of rampant encroachment in our area, BMC has my address and they leaked it to the encroachers once, following which some 30-40 women came outside my office looking for me. I had to call the police.” Urich also shared about how he was pulled up by a local political leader for retweeting a tweet by an anonymous page, which had complained of an illegal food stall near a hospital. Urich shared that the information was leaked by the G north ward officials.

Chetan Kamble, who runs a page called Chakachak Dadar on Twitter, had reported from his Twitter account about rampant encroachment on Senapati Bapat Marg in the Dadar area, after multiple complaints, Chetan was confronted by a hawker who intimidated him to not tweet about this anymore.

“Hawkers do not have Twitter accounts, so of course, my information was leaked by the G north ward officials to the hawkers. Not only BMC, but even local police stations also tried to intimidate me after hawkers reached them for help so that I would stop complaining.”

Following the intimidation, Chetan too has now stopped complaining of hawker’s menace in the area and only sticks to resolving other civic issues.

Besides this, many citizens also took to Twitter to share their plight and felt that BMC will not do anything about it and shared that even they faced such intimidation in the past after BMC leaked their identity.

For two consecutive days, HT tried reaching out to Iqbal Chahal, who did not comment on it despite reading the messages.