Stalls grabbing pavements are mushrooming all over Salt Lake while the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation is allegedly in a state of limbo.
Shacks and stalls made of plastic sheets wrapped around bamboo poles, and with plywood partitions, have come up along every major road in the township. Several roads inside residential blocks and at least one driveway, too, have been taken over by hawkers.
Many of these stalls sell fast food and use ovens fuelled by LPG or kerosene.
An official of the civic body said none of the stalls in Salt Lane has a licence to operate and most of them have encroached on government properties, including pavements, median dividers and even roads.
Such illegal stalls were hard to miss when The Telegraph drove through all three sectors of the township on Sunday.
The situation is similar on pavements and roads across Sector V, too.
An official of the fire and emergency services department said the stalls pose a fire risk as these are made of flammable materials such as plastic, bamboo and plywood and they use LPG cylinders and kerosene to cook.
“We have seen multiple times how such stalls turn an area into a tinderbox. Besides, it makes firefighting very risky because of the presence of LPG cylinders and kerosene,” the official said.
A Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation official said no eviction drive had been conducted by the civic body in the past four years.
An official of the Nabadiganta Industrial Township Authority (NDITA), which looks after civic amenities in Sector V, said they, too, had not carried out any eviction drive in at least five years.
Hawkers’ stalls near Anandaloke Hospital in Salt Lake on Sunday. Gautam Bose
The Telegraph spotted stalls on the pavements in Sectors I, II and III. There were stalls on the footpaths at Karunamoyee, opposite the Geological Survey of India building, in front of the Punjab National Bank rotary, lanes in several blocks including DL and EE and the newly renovated stretch along the Kestopur canal near AL Block.
This newspaper saw more than 50 stalls near the Karunamoyee intersection, one of the busiest in Salt Lake.
Stalls have sprung up in front of the CGO Complex and the East-West Metro stations.
DL Block and the lane and the walkway adjacent to the headquarters of the Geographical Society of India, in DK Block, had a number of hawkers. A stall selling vegetables and tea was spotted on the driveway of a house in DL Block.
Stalls near the Kuranamoyee bus terminus. Gautam Bose
Vegetable peels, fish scales and feathers from poultry lined a pavement opposite Anandalok Hospital, where over 25 stalls have come up.
A resident of EE Block, who boards buses from the bus stop nearby, said it was difficult to stand there because of the stench. “After the day’s sales, most hawkers dump waste on the road. That produces an unbearable stench. Some action should be taken,” said Sucharita Basu, who works in Sector V.
The walkway in front of the CGO Complex, which houses several central government offices, is lined with eateries and tea and paan stalls.
Krishna Chakraborty, mayor of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation, said the eviction drives had stopped. “We cannot evict them. We can only rehabilitate. We are trying to select an empty plot where we can construct a hawkers’ market,” said Chakraborty.