The Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC) will start a survey this week to determine the number of hawkers in Salt Lake and places off VIP Road like Baguiati, Kestopur, Teghoria and parts of Rajarhat, a senior official of the civic body said.

Multiple teams from the civic body will fan out across all 41 wards under its jurisdiction, starting with the 14 wards that comprise the planned areas of Salt Lake.

The survey teams will record the number of hawkers, collect copies of their Aadhaar cards and the address of the building in front which the stalls are located.

In addition, the teams will record the locations where stalls have encroached
on roads.

Location pins will be placed on such spots on app-based maps. The data will be used to create a map showing the exact spots where the hawkers have set up stalls by encroaching on roads.

The dates on which the teams survey each area will also be recorded, the BMC
official said.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee had vented out her anger at the grabbing of pavements and roads by hawkers and said that a section of police, politicians and civic officials were responsible for the encroachment of public spaces during a meeting in Nabanna on June 24.

The chief minister had said that Salt Lake was now “a shame.”

She also said that the councillors of BMC don’t work
at all.

“We are trying to determine the exact number of hawkers in the BMC area. No such survey had been carried out in the past,” said the BMC official.

After the survey, each hawker will be handed out a “non-transferable” vending certificate.

Krishna Chakraborty, the mayor of the BMC, said that one hawker will be permitted to operate only one stall.

“We will permit one hawker to operate only one stall. We cannot allow a single hawker to operate multiple stalls. The survey will help us determine the number of stalls and we will also ensure that no new stalls come up,” Chakraborty said.

On Monday, Metro spotted several stretches of the VIP Road that connects the airport with the rest of the city overrun with hawkers’ stalls.

Stalls selling fish, vegetables and poultry products were seen on both the airport and Ultadanga-bound flank of the VIP Road near the Baguiati bus stand and in places like Kestopur and Kaikhali.

Every morning and evening customers of such stalls park vehicles on the main road creating bottlenecks that slow down the traffic considerably.

In Salt Lake too, walkways are overrun with pavement-grabbing stalls.

This newspaper had reported how the hawkers’ stalls removed during the eviction drives in June, are back in business across Salt Lake.