The Bombay High Court on Wednesday banned hawking on foot and rail overbridges in Mumbai and within 150 metres of railway stations, PTI reported. A division bench of the court refused to accept petitions filed by city hawkers, which asserted that municipal authorities cannot evict them as per provisions of the Street Vendors Act, 2014.
They claimed that the law allowed hawkers to set up shops anywhere in the city, and that civic bodies cannot evict them because there were no “no-hawking zones”. The High Court, however, observed that there would be chaos in Mumbai if the argument was accepted.
The decision comes a month after 23 people died in a stampede at Mumbai’s Elphinstone Road station, where the foot overbridge has a number of small shops set up by hawkers.
“No hawking will be permitted within 100 metres from any place of worship, holy shrine, educational institutes and hospitals and within 150 metres from any municipal or other markets or from any railway stations,” the court said in its order, quoting a 2009 Supreme Court judgement.
The bench also referred to the September 29 stampede at the Elphinstone Road station. “The presence of a large number of hawkers on the foot overbridge is said to have been one of the major contributing factors in the mishap,” the court said.
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