The hawkers will have to carry back their wares after the day's work, said civic officials. Goods left behind will be confiscated by the BMC. Mayor Nandu Satam is reportedly keen on the idea, and a committee headed by Additional Municipal Commissioner V R Ramani will be formed to study the new proposal. The corporation will also issue hawkers identity cards. And the onus of deciding who sits where will be on hawkers.

With this new concept, the corporation hopes to plug perceived loopholes in the earlier proposal. It took two years and a survey on the number of hawkers in Mumbai costing Rs 40 lakh for civic officials to realise that the creation of the two zones would do little toaddress the issue and may even trigger off a law and order problem.

Civic officials told Express Newsline that creating hawking zones as per the earlier proposal would imply providing facilities like stalls to hawkers, which, fear officials, would be tantamount to permanently gifting them land. ``There is no guarantee that hawkers will not construct regular stalls and start living in these stalls in the future,'' said Deputy Municipal Commissioner Chandrashekhar Rokde. Residents' associations had also dug in their heels at the prospect of hawking zones in their areas, with groups in Kurla, Versova and Chembur filing petitions against the proposed zones.

Also, with lakhs of hawkers and scarce free space, it was proposed to convert footpaths into hawking zones. But as per Development Control (DC) rules, the Metropolitan Regional Town Planning (MRTP) Act and sections 313 and 314 of the Mumbai Municipal Act 1888, footpaths and roads cannot be provided for hawking in a regularised manner, an officialinformed. The city and the traffic police were also not ready to let out footpaths to hawkers, added Rokde.

Former civic administrative officer Vishnu Kamat, who had given commissioner Gokhale the idea of non-hawking zones, told Express Newsline: ``If BMC takes on the responsibility of providing stalls to all who migrate to Mumbai, it will also have to continue accounting for those who will keep coming into the city. This is not a practical solution.''