Mumbai: Despite a huge hue and cry on the proposed hawking zones, Mumbaikars’ response to the civic body’s list is far from encouraging. With barely a day left for the deadline to expire, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has received only about 4,000 suggestions and objections on the hawking pitches list.
The BMC had announced the list of 85,891 hawking zones on 1,366 roads in the city. The list has been made up as per the 2015 survey and has been put up on the website mcgm.gov.in by the civic body. It has invited suggestions and objections from citizens till January 31. After this, the pitches will be finalised.
As soon as the hawking zone list was released, there was a lot of uproar from all quarters with citizens and civic activists opposing it vehemently. The list was also condemned by the corporators, who demanded that the hawking zones should be scrapped as they are in complete violation of high court’s directives.
Against this backdrop, the public response to sending suggestions and objections to hawking pitches has been poor. While the feedback count has barely reached 4,000, it has got a lot of repetition, said, civic officials.
“Most of the letters are written about hawking pitches from the same area. Some have raised their objection about hawking being allowed near schools. Corporators have also written letters to the BMC, whereas we have received feedback from emails too,” said a senior civic official.
“Rather than the number of letters, it is content of the letter, which is more important,” said Nidhi Chaudhari, deputy municipal commissioner. “We will welcome unique suggestions from the citizens. We had expected more feedback from all areas of the city,” she added.
