Sales have dwindled in New Market at a time when it should peak, ahead of Puja, because of hawkers, traders have said.

A trader who has been running a shop for three decades inside the old market complex told Metro on Thursday that his annual sales had slumped by almost 50 per cent from 2004-05 to 2017-18.

The 58-year-old businessman from College Street blamed hawkers for the fall in sales during this period.

“They are all over the place, along the entire stretch of Bertram Street. Even a decade ago customers would park their cars before walking into the market complex,” Ashok Gupta, a shop owner, said.

“Now, it is not even possible to walk down the street... customers feel somewhat intimidated by the hawkers.”

There are some 2,700-odd shops inside the 144-year-old market. There are 27 entrances and exits covering various zones that include the old market complex, the multi-storey new complex, the masala patti, vegetable market and the poultry, fish and meat area.

Shops are rented out at Rs 6 a square feet for a month. Block A, the oldest portion of the market, has the office of the market superintendent, who is an employee of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation that owns the market.

Traders who have been running shops for generations said New Market was totally different. The 1935 Calcutta Municipal Gazette talks of some of the products that made New Market different: oranges from Palestine, apples from the US, lemons from Italy and tins of Fern leaf biscuits from France.

Now, the area around the market complex is filled with hawkers in three levels — the old ones along the footpath, the second layer who surfaced later and third, the “flying” ones who stand and hawk their wares. Hawkers block the entrances and exits and the rude behaviour of some puts off several New Market customers, traders said.

An estimated 3,000 hawkers are present across the market that sees a little over Rs 100 crore in transactions in a month.

Representatives of two market unions, the New Market Traders Association and the SS Hogg Market Traders Association, said repeated requests to the CMC have had no action.

“Whenever we have complained, a civic team has arrived with cops. They would ask hawkers to vacate the area... after a few days, the hawkers would return,” Debu Bhattacharya, a shop owner on the first floor of the new complex, said. “This is supposed to be the peak time for sales. But all shop owners are suffering.”

“The Simpark is closed. There is no place to park vehicles. Customers, mostly women, who would arrive in the afternoons, have stopped,” Ashim Bardhan, owner of a readymade garments shop on the ground floor of the new complex, said. “We don’t know where we are headed.”

In 2015, traders had shut down the market for three days to protest the hawker menace. It resulted only in civic assurances, traders said.