Surveys to identify hawkers and count their numbers started at five locations in the city on Monday — the area around New Market, Hatibagan, Gariahat, Behala and the Oberoi Grand Arcade.
Hawkers found in their stalls during the survey are being identified as owners of the stalls and the certificate of vending will be issued in their names.
The survey teams, from the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), are also clicking pictures of the hawkers and linking their Aadhaar numbers with the data being
collected.
“The data will be analysed to find out whether two or more stalls are linked to the same Aadhaar number and whether one hawker was photographed in two or more stalls,” said a KMC official.
The manner in which the data is being collected will help prevent sale of space on footpaths, mayor Firhad Hakim said. A hawker can have only one dala or stall in the city, he said.
“The person who is present in the stall at the time of the survey will be identified as its owner in our records. We will issue the certificate of vending in that person’s name. Our teams will visit the stalls again to find out whether the persons identified as owners are running them or not,” the mayor told Metro on Monday.
Hakim and others in the KMC had used strong words earlier, too, asserting that the sale of footpath space would not be allowed and a hawker would not be allowed to run more than one stall.
But very little action has been witnessed on the ground, raising questions about their commitment.
The information collected from hawkers is being entered into a mobile application and will remain stored in the KMC’s servers. The information can be accessed later by officials using the app.
A member of one of the survey teams said they were collecting the name and address of each hawker, GIS-based location of the stall and the Aadhaar number of the hawker, among other information.
If the hawkers had voter and PAN cards on them, those numbers were being recorded, too.
About 150 KMC officials have been trained to conduct the survey. Fourteen teams fanned out in the five locations where the survey was done on Monday.
The survey had a token start in Gariahat on Friday, but in the other four locations, Monday was the Day 1 of the exercise.
Hakim said the KMC would wrap up the survey within a month. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee has sought a count of the number of hawkers across Bengal from the state’s urban development department. Hakim is also the minister of the department.
Calcutta’s town vending committee had conducted surveys in Gariahat, Hatibagan and New Market in 2022. The data collected then was not analysed and very little action was taken on it. That data will possibly become redundant now, felt officials.
The vending committee has been empowered by the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, a central law, to penalise errant hawkers and also to take measures to protect their livelihood. The committee has been tasked to give vending certificates to hawkers to protect their livelihood and from threats of eviction.
KMC officials said they expected more action on the data being collected now as the present survey is being done after a prod from chief minister Mamata Banerjee. Mamata had vented out her anger at police, officials and politicians in two meetings at Nabanna last week for allowing indiscriminate grabbing of pavements and roads across the state.
“There is a proposal that hawkers should not be allowed to sit within 50ft of 58 important crossings in the city. The survey will identify the hawkers sitting in that zone. That will help us plan accordingly,” said a KMC official.
“The survey will also reveal the number of hawkers sitting outside important institutions. That will help us plan their rehabilitation, if required.”
