Street hawkers in and around Bhadra Fort area are seen more on the run with their goods than running their tiny businesses for the past three weeks,thanks to the local police,which are hounding them out in the wake of terror alert sounded recently. This is impacting the livelihood of nearly 1,500 vendors doing business on the stretch from the district panchayat building to Pankornaka. Business has reduced to a trickle for them with customers being told to hurry the deals to avoid impending police action. People like Rajendrasinh Vaghela,who commutes from nearby Sanand town to sell ready-made garments here,now find it difficult to run the family with the loss of around Rs 300 they used to earn daily. The market place here is known for affordable and decent quality garments that fits the budget of lower and middle income group and sees a huge business during festivals like Diwali and Eid. It is not the hawkers alone who are losing their daily earnings. Also affected are traders of Gheekanta area who sell garments through these hawkers, giving them a commission. Yunus Shikari,a road side vendor here for past 35 years,says: Not that we were not willing to move elsewhere to help reduce traffic congestion but then in one such relocation at Cadila Bridge 10 years ago,we were attacked by local goons and one of our men was even murdered. So where do we go? Ravindrakumar Pandurang,a vendor here living in Narol area,has to support his family as well as his brother who met with an accident only a week ago. It has become difficult to meet our basic expenses now that the business has become very uncertain with income dwindling to almost nil, he says. It is not that we are illegally occupying the space. We have all legal evidence to prove our right to do business. The High Court has already asked the AMC to implement the National Street Vendor Policy and we have already been surveyed recently by the AMC. The court has already restrained AMC from disturbing us but the police still keep us on our toes, said Shikari. Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone 2) Harikrishna Patel said that many legal issues were to be sorted out in this case and that a final solution lay with the municipal corporation,which should implement national street vendors policy under which these hawkers were to be rehabilitated. We have received requests from vendors that they be allowed to do business till festive season. We are working out some solution but in no case will four to five rows be allowed, he said.
