Nagpur: The Nagpur Bench of Bombay High Court expected the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) and city police to follow the Supreme Court directives against illegal squatters and hawkers at Sitabuldi Main Road and other market places in Nagpur. The High Court expected total compliance of the apex court ruling in market areas.
The compliance sought and expectation about implementing the Supreme Court’s order to evict unauthorised vendors and encroachers from public roads and footpaths of market area is likely to result in special drive to clear such illegal hawkers.
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Tues 19 Nov. 2024
A division bench consisting of Justice Sunil Shukre and Justice Avinash Gharote, while hearing a petition filed by Vijay Agrawal and others, against brazen encroachment of Sitabuldi Main Road by illegal hawkers, directed Municipal Commissioner and Commissioner of Police to file their compliance report about not allowing illegal hawkers by November 2.
The petitioner’s counsel Adv Firdos Mirza pointed out that as per High Court’s own order the law laid down by Apex Court in Ekta judgement, no hawking shall be permitted within 100 meters from any place of worship, holy shrine, educational institutions and hospitals or within 150 meters from any municipal or other markets or from any railway station. It has also been directed that no hawking would be permitted on footbridges and over-bridges.
The petitioners alleged that these directions were being flouted with impunity at Sitabuldi Main Road and the authorities had turned Nelson’s eye to these requirements of law.
The petitioners prayed to direct Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) and City Police to deploy sufficient police force on Sitabuldi Main Road to ensure that there were no encroachers upon the footpath and that no unauthorised vendors were permitted to cause any obstruction to free flow of traffic by placing goods and merchandise on roads. The High Court, while recording submission, noted that it had no doubt that authorities “must be implementing in letter and spirit the above referred directions issued by the Supreme Court.”
The affidavit must dispel the notion that “there is no occasion for anybody to even doubt that the directions of the Supreme Court are not being implemented and that the Authorities are not ensuring the compliance with those directions,” the High Court hoped.
Adv Firdos Mirza appeared for the petitioners while APP K R Deshpande represented the respondents.
