Hawkers who have been sitting along stores in the Oberoi Grand arcade shut down their stalls on Saturday evening.
Those on the other side pushed back inside a yellow line drawn by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) to demarcate space that they can legally occupy.
Pedestrians saw a Grand arcade like they had not in many years.
The question is: how long will it remain this way?
“Earlier, I had to jostle through people. There was hardly any space to walk. This is different,” said a middle-aged man rushing towards Chowringhee Square.
Jayanta Sett, the owner of a store selling cameras in the arcade, said he was happy.
“The footpath is cleaner. I hope this stays. We have lost a lot of customers because of the way hawkers set up stalls and conducted their business,” he said.
Sett added that hawkers started arriving on this stretch in the early 2000s. “Hawkers were initially allowed to sit only between 4pm and 6pm. Back then there were 20 or 30 hawkers.”
A survey conducted last year found 116 hawkers in the Grand arcade. The hawkers have put up tables on the pavement to display the wares.
“Twenty-three of the stalls were on the side of the stores. All of them have to shift. There cannot be stalls by hawkers on both sides of the pavement,” said a senior official of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC).
“We have proposed to the hawkers that those on the side of the road accommodate the 23 hawkers by cutting down the size of their stalls,” said the official.
The KMC, which is responsible for implementing a Calcutta High Court order that said two-thirds of the width of the pavement in front of the Oberoi Grand must be free for pedestrians, had set a 48-hour deadline for the hawkers to sit in a single file. The deadline ended on Saturday afternoon.
Police, KMC officials and members of Kolkata’s town vending committee visited the arcade on Thursday afternoon and issued the deadline.
In an order issued on November 28, Justice Amrita Sinha of Calcutta High Court had asked the town vending committee to ensure that two-thirds of the pavement in front of the hotel was left free for pedestrians.
The 23 stalls that were on the side of the stores at the arcade opened on Saturday morning. Around 4.30pm, a large police team came to the site. The police did not have to use any force.
Around the same time, some hawker leaders from the arcade also came there. They asked the hawkers on the side of the stores to wind up the stalls.
“We will abide by the court’s order. All stalls on the side of stores will remain closed from today evening. They will not open on Sunday too. Members of the town vending committee will come on Monday and a plan will be worked out on how to accommodate those who were sitting on the side of the stores,” said Mohammad Naskim Akhtar, a hawker in the arcade.
Mohammad Sohaib, who had his stall on the side of the stores, was winding up his stall around 5pm. “We will not disobey the orders of the court,” he said.
The Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, a central act, has given the committee the power to penalise hawkers and also to take measures to protect their livelihood.
Every town or city in the country must have its town vending committee.
Justice Sinha of the Calcutta High Court had added in the November 28 order said: “The Corporation shall file a further report mentioning whether two-thirds of the pavement, as was supposed to be kept free, is actually kept free for pedestrian movement. The position of the hawkers in the one-third of the pavement shall be disclosed in the report.”