The petitioners, their lawyer Advocate M V Bhatt claimed, had been hawking various household articles near the Goregaon station for over two decades now. He cited a Supreme Court ruling of 1993 which stressed on the hawkers' right to earn their livelihood and put the onus of their relocation by creating special hawkers zone on the BMC. Now, the hawkers are alleging that BMC has ignored the SC ruling despite having three vacant plots at Jawahar Nagar, Goregaon, any one of which could be used for creating a hawkers' zone. The petitioners claim they had offered to settle the issue amicably,but the BMC responded by launching an anti-hawkers drive.

Meanwhile, in yet another judgement the division bench of Justice Ashok Desai and R M Lodha set aside a BMC circular pertaining to ``recovery of daily unauthorised occupation-cum-refuse removal charges from unauthorised hawkers.'' Circular said any unauthorised hawker on a municipal road/ footpath/ street not paying the charges would be liable to be removed. The collections under this account were acknowledged in terms of miscellaneous receipts, and not license fees. The charge was designed as a regulatory method to stop illegal hawking.

The division bench ordered that BMC was not justified in charging a tax from unauthorised hawkers. The judges said there was no authority, legal or otherwise, which could recover charges, fees, or taxes from unauthorised entities.