MUMBAI: The BMC will conduct biometric enumeration of hawkers while issuing licences by 2018, said municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta, taking note of TOI reports on how hawking in Mumbai is largely controlled by an invisible class of well-connected locals, mostly politically aligned, who use an army of lowly-paid migrants to run the business on the streets.TOI discussed with Mehta various findings that came to light during interactions with hawkers on city streets.“The biometric enumeration will help decide whether a street vendor is genuine or not,” said Mehta. The process will involve registering their fingerprints and photographs. “We might even ask the vendors to link their Aadhaar number with the hawking licence so that when a licence inspector is taking action against illegal vendors in an area, they can check on the spot if a hawker is licensed or needs to be penalized or evicted just by taking his thumb impression,” he said.Mumbai currently has 15,159 licensed street vendors. However, during the 10-day hawker registration drive, which began on July 18, 2014, civic authorities distributed over 1.25 lakh forms and of these, 99,435 hawkers were found to be eligible. However, hawker unions insist that there are around 3 lakh hawkers operating across the city. They even claimed that many of the 99,435 street-sellers were not genuine; they only stood on the footpath with wares after learning that the BMC was issuing new licences.Mehta said he was aware of these facts. “Therefore, we will scrutinize the actual number of hawkers once again before issuing licences to them. We expect the number (99,435) to drop further when biometric enumeration is done,” said the municipal chief.On the issue of ‘haftas’ that most vendors claim to pay civic staffers—between Rs 20 and Rs 100 every day—to allow them to do business on the streets, Mehta said it was a ‘two-way street’. “Hawkers offering to pay ( hafta ) is the starting point of corruption. They are giving money because they are unauthorized as they do not have licences,” he said.Currently, the BMC is awaiting state government approval for the formation of a town vending committee to demarcate hawking zones.The move would be in line with guidelines under the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 which was enacted by the Centre to regulate hawking in public areas and protect the rights of hawkers.While initially there was talk of one panel for all 24 wards, Mehta said now they have decided to have a town vending committee for each of the three zones—island city, and western and eastern suburbs. “We decided to opt for zonal town vending committees to ensure better monitoring. The committees will be entrusted with the task of marking hawking and no-hawking zones, as well as deciding if specific areas should have certain kinds of markets, like vegetables and fruits, clothing market and other miscellaneous items,” said Mehta.(This is the last of the 4-part series on hawking in Mumbai)