No hawking near railway stations, Bombay HC tells vendors

Mumbai: The Bombay high court has refused to allow flower vendors to hawk their wares within 150 metre of railway stations, although a previous high court order permitted peddling of items connected to religious places within 100 metre of those places. The court said that judicial notice would have to be taken of the fact that railway stations saw a large number of people converging and hence, railway station restrictions would prevail.

A division bench of Justices Abhay Oka and Riyaz Chagla, while hearing the petition filed by the Bombay Hawkers Association, was informed that there were many temples in the vicinity of Dadar railway station, and that the devotional acts of believers, which involved paying floral tributes while offering puja in these temples, were getting hampered due to hawking restrictions imposed around the station.

The petitioner pointed at a previous order of Justice B.R. Gavai, where an exception was made in terms of hawking regulations around religious places for hawkers selling devotional items. Justice Gavai had ruled that while all hawkers had to observe a 100metre hawking restriction around religious places, the restriction was not applicable to hawkers selling products like flowers, agarbattis, chadars etc. that were offered as tribute by devotees.

The petitioner on Wednesday sought invocation of the said order around railway stations. However, the bench of Justice Oka held that as a large number of people visited railway stations, the railway station hawking restriction would prevail over Justice Gavai’s order, which had made an exception for hawkers vending devotional products around religious places.