In a major boost to the attempts of a section of the residents of Jodhpur Park, the local councillor on Sunday joined them on the streets to urge unauthorised hawkers on a key road of the neighbourhood to clear out after the Pujas. She gave them a deadline of October 14.

Residents of the south Calcutta locality had been campaigning to evict hawkers who had mushroomed especially since the pandemic along the main thoroughfare leading into the locality from Gariahat Road towards the Jodhpur market and turning towards South City. The Telegraph had reported last Wednesday how these new hawkers were causing traffic bottlenecks.

The residents had approached both the Lake police station and the councillor after there were heated exchanges with the encroachers on the last couple of Sundays when they had asked them to move out.

Councillor Mousumi Das of Ward 93 on Sunday led the group of residents on a walk along the thoroughfare parallel to Gariahat Road. With a loudhailer, she announced that they were being spared till the Pujas. “But after October 14, you have to clear out. The residents do not want you here and it is against the rules of the Corporation to allow hawkers to sit on the streets so close to a bazaar. Find space in the market or leave the area. Otherwise the police and the Corporation will take steps,” she warned them.

Some of the hawkers, who had so far ignored the residents’ appeals to leave, were seen packing things up for the day, at least a couple of hours earlier than noon when they usually wind up.

“These are mostly outsiders who have encroached on the pavements. We do not want to uproot anyone before the Pujas. But after the Pujas, they will have to leave. We are also dismantling the permanent structures they had built,” she told The Telegraph at the end of the drive.

On being pointed out about hawkers in the rest of the neighbourhood, she said she wanted to start with one stretch.