The reason behind street vendors’ repeated reappearance on the place from where they have been evicted has come to the civic body’s notice.

The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation is allegedly rejecting applications for the vendors’ rehabilitation in the city, resulting in encroachments by the vendors on government land and properties.

Last month, the issue had been raised at the civic body’s monthly council meeting, where several councillors expressed concern over rampant encroachments by the vendors on the road sides and drains. The vendors are reportedly saying that they are forced to illegally acquire the roadside spaces and the drains to run business.

“A number of street vendors are reaching out to us, asking for space to do business. We took up the issue with the mayor where it was revealed that the corporation had not sanctioned for a single vending zone since the past two years. This is resulting in the vendors occupying the streets and drains,” said a local councillor.

According to the existing practice, street vendors of a certain area form their association and applied to the corporation for getting a space for creating the vending zone. A civic body committee allots a suitable vacant space for the vending zone after scrutinising the application. When asked about why the civic body had not sanctioned a single vending zone in the past two years, a senior official told this newspaper that the matter was in sub judice since a certain group of street vendors filed a writ against the civic body.

“The matter was sub judice as we were not being able to conduct a survey of the vendors for the rehabilitation. We couldn’t be able to entertain any application filed with us for the similar reason. However, the matter is solved now, and our team is scrutinising the new and pending applications. We have also started conducting ward-wise survey of the eligible vendors for their rehabilitation,” said the official. The civic body came up with the plan to organise street vending by creating uniform vending zones for the vendors in the city. Accordingly, 46 vending zones had been created after 2006. Till now, about 22,000 vendors have been rehabilitated there. But, the initiative fails now with the growing number of vendors and lesser efforts to rehabilitate them.

“I, along with 15 others, had applied to civic body to allot us a vending zone almost a year ago. I have no idea why they are not approving our applications. We are forced to do the business on roadsides in the fear that their enforcement squad could evict us anytime,” said Jagannath Birtia, a fruit seller on Gopabandhu Marg.

At present, vendors have occupied the covered drains making it difficult for cleaning of the same to ensure smooth flow of wastewater. They have also encroached upon the road sides in other parts, narrowing the same down for easy movement of vehicles.

The encroachments have become a bane for pedestrians as footpaths are the easy target for street vending. “We don’t want to encroach upon the footpaths, roads or the drains if the administration provides us good place. We are poor people, and this is the way we earn our livelihood,” said Akram Sekh, a fast food seller at Kharavela Nagar.

Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena said they had received the councillors’ request and started conducting the survey to identify the vendors for rehabilitation. “The list will be ready in a month. We will then go for creation of vending zones to provide a better place to the vendors and also the shoppers,” said Jena.