Hawkers in the Grand arcade have 48 hours from Thursday to sit in a single file and there should be no stalls facing each other on any stretch of the pavement.
The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) on Thursday drew a line for the stalls, beyond which no hawkers can extend their ware. The line was demarcated after a third of the width of the pavement was measured.
Hawking rules framed by the state government make it mandatory for hawkers to leave at least two-thirds of the width of a pavement free for pedestrians. Stalls cannot extend beyond one-third of the width of a pavement.
For years, hawkers have been running stalls along both sides of the Grand arcade, blocking access to stores and shrinking the space for pedestrians.
Representatives of the KMC, police and Kolkata’s town vending committee informed the hawkers about the deadline, by when they have to sit in a single file, during a visit to the arcade on Thursday afternoon.
All hawkers who have their stalls along the stores in the Grand arcade should vacate the space within 48 hours.
“The hawkers must keep their stalls within one-third of the width of the pavement. A line has been drawn to mark the limit for the stalls. The hawkers have 48 hours to comply,” said a senior official of the KMC.
The official said compliance should be ensured from Sunday morning. “We have also written to the police that the rest of the space should be free for pedestrians.”
Mohammad Nasim Akhtar, who has a stall in the arcade, said 23 hawkers were sitting along the side of the arcade that is lined with stores.
“We are in talks with the hawkers’ union to find them a space for street vending. They will be relocated to a nearby space or accommodated among other stalls on the other side of the arcade,” Akhtar said.
If the hawkers sit along one side of the pavement, it will be after many years that pedestrians will get more space to walk through the arcade.
The late Prithvi Raj Singh Oberoi, then executive chairman of EIH Limited,
the owner of Oberoi Grand, had spoken about the encroachment of the arcade in 2018.
Oberoi, who was in Kolkata to attend the annual general meeting of the EIH, had said: “It is very sad to see what is happening to the centre of the city.... I feel very sad when I come to Kolkata.... If you want to buy something from the Grand arcade, you can’t go there. The shopkeepers are crying.”
The hawkers in the arcade have sprung up over the past two decades. Manwar Ali, the manager of the footwear store Regal, in the arcade, said he could not remember any hawkers when he joined the store in 2003.
“I got transferred to other cities and came back to this store again three years back. By then the pavement had been filled with hawkers,” he said.
Ali said their customers keep complaining about the struggle to reach the store through whatever little space is left on the pavement.
After the deadline was set, some of the stalls brought down the ware they had hung from wooden poles that stretched across the pavement.
Several stores said it was impossible to spot them from Chowringhee Road. “It would be good if the government can restrict hawkers within a third of the pavement,” said another store manager.
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 Oberoi Grand hotel was free for pedestrians.