The Kolkata Municipal Corporation is yet to make public a list of streets identified as vending and no-vending zones, though the civic body had promised to do so and invite suggestions and objections from Kolkatans.
The KMC had in the first week of December told Calcutta High Court that over 1,800 streets had been identified as no-vending zones but the civic body did not submit a list.
Some KMC officials said the list was not submitted in court because it could undergo changes after Kolkatans go through it and raise objections or suggest amendments.
The Telegraph reported on December 6 that the KMC, after a survey, came to the conclusion that 1,800 streets in the city that do not have pavements could be categorised as no-vending zones.
The survey was conducted after a prod from the high court asking the KMC to identify vending and no-vending zones.
There are another 124 streets where the pavements are less than 4ft-wide. The KMC wants to declare these streets, too, as no-vending zones.
A fresh survey is required on another 280 streets.
The Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, a central Act, defines a “vending zone” as an area or a place or a location “for the specific use by street vendors for street vending”.
No-vending zones are areas that should be free of hawkers.
A senior KMC official said they had shared the list with members of the town vending committee, which includes hawkers, police and government officials, among others, for their opinion.
“We will publish the list after one more week. By then the committee’s members will suggest changes, if any,” said the official.
Civic body officials had said after submitting the number of streets to the court that the draft list would be uploaded on the KMC website. An official had said that Kolkatans would have a fortnight’s time to give their feedback.
Debashis Kumar, the mayoral council member in charge of the parks and squares department of the KMC, promised to look into the matter.
“The list should have been uploaded on the website by now. I was under the impression that it had been uploaded. I will check why it has not been uploaded yet,” Kumar told The Telegraph on Tuesday afternoon.
“Maybe it got delayed because of the festival season,” Kumar, also the co-chairperson of Kolkata’s town vending committee, said.
The 2014 Act empowers the committee to identify hawkers and issue vending certificates that will give hawkers the security of street vending. The Act also empowers the committee as the authority to take action against hawkers.
Making the list public is necessary because residents of streets identified as vending zones may raise objections if there were no hawkers on it earlier.
The rules for street vending, prepared by the state government based on the 2014 Act, say hawkers can sit on a third of the width of a pavement and the rest should be kept free for pedestrians. No stall should be set up on a road or no part of a stall should encroach on a road, it says.