Gariahat hawkers are back to their old ways.
Stalls opposite each other on the same stretch of pavement, plastic covering stalls, additional construction beyond the overhead sheds allowed by authorities and setting up stalls occupying portions of roads were some of the violations The Telegraph spotted on Wednesday.
Some officials of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) have been bragging about how they have cleaned the pavements in Gariahat. The KMC allowed construction of overhead tin sheds on the stalls to replace plastic sheets. The construction of the overhead sheds started in January.
The KMC had said that the tin sheds cannot go beyond the size of the stall. But a walk along the pavements showed a different picture.
Multiple stalls have built additional sheds, beyond the ones built initially. The sheds have now touched the awnings of the stores on the ground floor of the buildings opposite the stalls. The pavements have again become dark, without any sunlight reaching them.
“I was very happy to see sunlight on the pavements of Gariahat earlier this year. I was walking along the pavement last week and I found that stretches of the footpath are again without any sunlight,” said a Ballygunge resident.
A long stretch of the pavement, from Anandamela going towards Golpark, has stalls on both sides. The stalls occupy more than two-thirds of the pavement’s width. It was not possible for two people to walk side by side without colliding with each other. The scene was similar on the northern pavement, from Jashoda Bhavan to Bedouin store.
At the crossing of Hindustan Road and Gariahat Road, stalls selling cutlery have encroached on the road. Crates and stocks of hawkers were kept on the road behind the stalls on some stretches. The hawking rules — framed by the state government on the basis of the central law — say no stall can occupy more than one-third of the width of a pavement. At least two-thirds must be free for pedestrians. These norms are routinely violated in Kolkata.
The rules also say no stall or portion of a stall can encroach on a road.
A KMC official told The Telegraph: “We have not yet conducted checks of hawker stalls in Gariahat. But violations are back in many places.”
Most hawkers in the Oberoi Grand arcade occupy more than a third of the width of the pavement, violating rules that mandate that two-thirds should be free for pedestrians, a survey by Kolkata’s town vending committee had found.
The town vending committee — made up of hawker representatives, police officers, government officials, NGOs and elected representatives, among others — is the sole authority that can take action against errant hawkers.
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 as well as take measures to protect their livelihood. Every town or city in the country must have its own vending committee.
Shaktiman Ghosh, a member of the town vending committee, said all hawkers who do not obey the rules must be ready to face consequences.
Debraj Ghosh, a hawker leader in Gariahat, said the hawkers’ union will soon do a survey of the pavement and ask all stall owners to remove the additional sheds.
“They have to keep the shed that was built initially. There cannot be any additional construction,” he said.