KMC draws yellow line on SN Banerjee Road to check hawker encroachment
Times of India | 17 February 2024
Kolkata: The town vending committee (TVC) on Friday drew a line on a third of the pavement at SN Banerjee Road — one of the busiest in terms of both pedestrian and vehicular traffic — to demarcate the area for hawking.
The yellow line that assigned a third of the pavement along the edge of the road in one of the most crowded and challenging pavements in the city aims to clear up two-third of the space for pedestrians.
Office-goers, shoppers and locals who negotiate these pavements regularly, hoped the exercise would bring order to hawking and stop further pavements from being grabbed. But hawkers who currently do business were irked at the narrow space being allotted to them and said doing any trade on it was virtually impossible.
TVC members admitted drawing the line was easy and that getting to enforce it was a tough task given multiple complexities, including the narrow width of pavement and the kind of hawkers they accommodate. These include vegetable and food vendors between Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road and Free School Street as well as apparel hawkers between Free School Street and Chowringhee. Pedestrians barely get 40% space on these pavements and need to jostle for space.
Central Kolkata United Hawkers’ Welfare Association president Bharat Shah, who was present while drawing the yellow line, made it clear that the hawkers had been asked to fall in line and abide by the hawking rules. Suresh Yadav, a hawker who sells mobile accessories near Chowringhee crossing, said he was looking for an alternative space to shift.
“I have been asked to shift to the other part of the pavement earmarked as the vending zone. I know it will be difficult for me to get adequate space. But then I need to be satisfied with whatever space is given to me,” said Yadav.
In the recent TVC drive to demarcate hawking zones on pavements, hawkers have only adhered to the line drawn at Grand Arcade. Subsequent lines drawn around New Market have not led to any enforcement. Both KMC officials and cops said the difference was the HC order in case of the former that had forced everyone to fall in line.
Cops from New Market who helped KMC officials on Thursday said they did not face any resistance from any quarters. “We are going to mark the narrower and heavily occupied part of S N Banerjee Road from Saturday and will increase our force. The market association has been roped in for this purpose,” said an officer.
Soon after, mayor Firhad Hakim held a meeting with OCs and took stock of the scenario in Esplanade and its adjoining areas and asked them to act tough on some encroachers. Cops said a round of videography was completed last year. An officer said a cell was in the works to monitor fresh encroachment.
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