The Trinamul Congress-run Siliguri Municipal Corporation (SMC), along with Siliguri Metropolitan Police, continued its drive to clear encroachments in the city on Thursday as mayor Gautam Deb held a meeting with elected representatives and officials to speed up a drinking water project.

The initiatives were taken after chief minister Mamata Banerjee had reprimanded Deb for the “poor performance” of the SMC. The rebuke came while she was addressing an administrative meeting in Nabanna on Monday.

Mamata had said that the SMC is one of the worst performers among the civic bodies in the state in terms of drinking water supply and housing while mentioning the highhandedness of land mafias in and around the city.

The admonishment prompted Deb to return to Siliguri and take a slew of initiatives to improve the performance of the civic body.

On Thursday, a team from the SMC reached Kutcheri Road, a prominent thoroughfare in Siliguri. Accompanied by the police, the SMC team removed shanties and other encroachments from the road.

Deb said the SMC was trying to speed up the work on the new drinking water project. Also, an alternative intake well, through which water would be drawn to the treatment plant from the Teesta canal at Fulbari, on the southern parts of Siliguri, will be commissioned soon.

“We have spoken to officials of the state public health engineering department. The new intake well will be ready by August 31. We have spent ₹6.9 crore on the well which will help provide more drinking water in the SMC area,” said Deb.

As of now, the demand for water is around 80 million litres per day while barely 45 million litres are supplied per day in the civic area.

For the ₹518 crore mega project, the laying of pipes is in progress.

“It will be done within a fortnight. For the second phase of the project, the technical evaluation of bids is in progress,” said Deb.

He also said the SMC had planned to build hawkers’ zones in the city, as was suggested by the chief minister in Calcutta at a meeting on Thursday.

“We will prepare a detailed plan to rehabilitate hawkers in the city on the basis of the standard operating procedure of the state government. We have conducted a survey and identified some areas for the vendors and will soon hold a meeting with stakeholders concerned,” the mayor said.

Sources in the SMC said the civic board had identified 136 vending and non-vending zones in all 47 wards following an instruction of the state urban development and municipal affairs department.

“According to the plan, 58 spots have been identified where vending can be allowed. Hawkers will be placed in these spots and will not be allowed to open makeshift stalls and sell their products from other locations,” said a source.