The Royal Bombay Yacht Club (RBYC) near the Taj Mahal Palace hotel at Colaba, has red-flagged the increasing number of hawkers in its vicinity, urging authorities to take action and ensure clean-ups. The magnificent heritage edifice, located diagonally opposite the Gateway of India, has hordes of tourists swarming the area because of its location. While that is expected, the club, in a letter to Additional Municipal Commissioner A Sharma dated April 19, cited that “the original road, the Mahakavi Bhushan Marg, has been narrowed down, while taxis and huge tourist buses are allowed to park and double park, resulting in total chaos and traffic jams.” Earlier in the communication, the club had stated that the letter is about the illegal hawker menace, with its subject line highlighting the same. The first line of the letter asks for “urgent intervention on a matter of great concern.”

The nuisance

Excerpts from the letter read: “In February 2005, the BMC with police help removed illegal hawkers and shops on Mahakavi Bhushan Marg, behind our building. These illegal shops and hawkers have been a great nuisance not only because of the dirtiness they caused but also as noise levels had increased and they had become the centre of undesirable activities, particularly in the late evenings.” The next paragraph focused on the present. It said, “We observe a few hawkers have recently put up temporary sheds with plastic sheets and are hanging clothes for drying which obstructs light and air to our ground officers. This is a declared heritage building, which is 175 years old. The activities are creating a lot of problems for us.”