Ramparvesh Shrikrishna Gupta was a boy of 10 when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru visited his locality in Vile Parle (East) in 1962. Touched by the plight of the 100-odd migrant families in the area, which included World War II veterans like Mr. Gupta’s father, Nehru directed the BMC to issue vendor licenses to them. Two years later, most of these families set up vegetable stalls in the Mungibai Road Vegetable Market.
Over 50 years down the line, the descendants of these families are facing eviction by the civic body. The BMC action against them began on November 10, and since then, it has been a daily story of harassment, says Mr. Gupta, now 65. “All our pleas that these were vegetable stalls licensed to World War II veterans who settled here were in vain. The policemen took particular pleasure in using knives we use to cut vegetables to destroy our produce and dump it on the street.”
Like Mr. Gupta, there are others with a World War II family background selling vegetables in Vile Parle, like Dashrath Gir’s father Batuli Giri was a sepoy. Other license holders like Lallan Bhagat, 65, Chandrahas Rai, 55 and Surendar Mundarika Yadav don’t have a war veteran in their families, but the eviction threat hurts just the same.
From battlefield to market
Mr. Gupta says his father took a bullet in his thigh in World War II, which moved Nehru. At a hastily-organised public meeting in Vile Parle, Nehru said the migrants were from the holy holy Pawan region in Varanasi, and directed the BMC to issue licenses to all migrants struggling to make ends meet in a new city.”
Both Nehru and his successor, Lalbahadur Shastri, had passed away when the BMC issued licenses to Mr. Gupta’s father and scores of migrants from Uttar Pradesh and other parts of Maharashtra. The city received a steady supply of vegetable through them at the Mungibai Road Vegetable Market. Before he died in 1988, his father transferred the vendor license in Mr. Gupta’s name.
He adds, “Between 1970 and 1975, Mayor Dr. Ramesh Prabhu of the Shiv Sena got the civic body to relocate the BMC Vegetable Market to a spot near the newly-constructed Dinanath Mangeshkar Hall, while reserving the market plot for constructing the Babasaheb Gawde Hospital. We were not rehabilitated in that exercise, as it was restricted to the plot needed for the hospital project.”
Despite repeated attempts, Deputy Municipal Commissioner Ranjit Dhakne and Ram Dutonde, OSD to the Municipal Commissioner, were unavailable for comment.
