HC orders BMC to remove unlicensed hawkers from Colaba Causeway

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court on Tuesday officially signed an order directing the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to evict all unlicensed hawkers in Colaba, under police protection. The court had verbally asked the BMC to evict the unlicensed hawkers on March 26 after the civic body informed it that there were only 83 licensed hawkers in the area, as opposed to the 253 claimed by the Colaba Causeway Tourism Hawkers Stall Union. The official direction to evict the unlicensed hawkers, issued by the division bench of justices Ajay Gadkari and Kamal Khata, came after a long legal battle involving hawkers seeking protection from eviction. On Tuesday, the counsel for the hawkers’ union, Ankit Lohia, instructed by advocates Zainab R Shaikh and Rafiullah Shaikh, referred to an order passed by a division bench of justices BR Gavai and MS Karnik in November 2017 which underlined that the BMC’s hawker survey conducted on May 1, 2024, recorded that the expected eligible applicants in the city were found to be 2,908.