- (1.) Leave granted in Special Leave Petitions.
(2.) All these Appeals are against the Judgments of the High Court dated 5th July, 2000 and 3rd May, 2001. The facts leading up to these Appeals are that as far back in 1983 a number of Writ Petitions were filed in this Court, by and on behalf of a large number of persons who carried on hawking activities in Bombay. These Petitions came to be disposed of by Judgment of this Court in the case of Bombay Hawkers' Union v. Bombay Municipal Corporation reported in (1985) 3 SCC 52[8] By this judgment, it was held that the right to carry on trade or business conferred by Art. 19(1)(g) of the Constitution of India is subject to the provisions of sub-clause (6) of Art. 19 which provided that nothing in sub-clause (g) of Art. 19(1) would affect the operation of any existing law insofar as it imposed, or prevented the State from making any law imposing, in the interests of general public, reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the right conferred by the said sub-clause. It was held that no one had any right to do his or her trade or business so as to cause nuisance, annoyance or inconvenience to the other members of the public. It was held that public streets, by their very nomenclature and definition, were meant for the use of the general public. It was held that the public streets are not laid to facilitate the carrying on of private trade or business. It was held that if hawkers were to be conceded the right claimed by them they could hold the society to ransom by squatting on the center of busy thoroughfares, thereby paralysing all civic life. It was recognized that in some of the parts of the city the hawkers had made it impossible for the pedestrians to walk on footpaths or even on the streets. This Court then examined the scheme proposed by the Municipal Commissioner and laid down certain modalities for hawking and non-hawking zones. This Court also accepted the restrictions/conditions proposed by the Municipal Commissioner, except for some changes. This Court then directed the Municipal Commissioner to frame a final scheme on the guidelines suggested by it.
(3.) The above mentioned Judgment was delivered on 3rd July, 1985. On 12th August, 1986 Bombay Municipal Corporation (for short BMC) approved some guidelines. It then constituted an Advisory Committee composed of officials of the Corporation, representatives of the Residents' Association, NGO's, elected representatives of the Traffic Police and representatives of the hawkers. A draft scheme was framed on 12th August, 1996. Under the draft scheme 488 zones were shown as hawking zones. Under the draft scheme 49,000 hawkers were to be accommodated. Under the draft scheme 28 sites, in different wards, were earmarked for construction of hawkers' plazas. Under the draft scheme highways, arterial and trunk roads, footover bridges, subways, certain distance around railway stations, certain radius around municipal markets, religious places, educational institutions, medical institutions and large traffic junctions, were totally banned for hawkers. BMC also got undertaken a survey by Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action. This survey disclosed that there were approximately 1,03,000 hawkers out of which 15,000 were licenced hawkers and approximately 22,000 were issued daily receipts or 'pautis' under a Scheme known as 'Unauthorized Occupation cum Refuse Removal Charges'.;