Stretches of roads in the New Market area, from where hawkers have been pushed back to pavements, are looking wider.

But union leaders said many hawkers who have lost their stalls following the pushback were yet to get rehabilitation and this kept alive the possibility of them returning on the roads again.

The drives by police and an ongoing survey by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) have ensured the roads — Humayun Place, Bertram Street and Lindsay Street — have been reclaimed. The hawkers have shifted to the pavement or to the extreme edge of the road.

Hawker leaders said many hawkers were yet to find a space to open their stalls after they were removed from the roads.

The space on the pavement is not adequate to rehabilitate all who used to sit on the metalled surface on Humayun Place, the road running between the Oberoi Grand and New Empire, said Saif Ali, a hawker leader in the area.

“About 130 hawkers in the New Market area are yet to find a space,” said Ali, one of the office bearers of the New Market Hawkers’ Union, affiliated to INTTUC, the trade union wing of the Trinamool Congress.

Sunny Shaw, another hawker union leader of the area, said the fates of more than a hundred hawkers are uncertain.

“If no solution comes out, they will be forced to sit on the roads again. They will have to run their families also,” said Shaw.

Visits to Humayun Place and Bertram Street over the last week showed that hawkers’ stalls that had eaten up nearly half of the width of these roads were no longer there on the metalled surface.

Stretches of Lindsay Street, too, had been cleared of hawkers who used to up stalls on the metalled surface.

The roads looked wider and cleaner.

But how long this will persist is a question in the minds of traders and pedestrians, especially with the hawker unions claiming that many hawkers have not been able to set up their stalls following the pushback.

The traders are also worried that once the focus of the police and the civic body shifts away, the hawkers will return to their old ways and encroach on the road.

“This is much better than what used to be the situation on these roads. Now, there is space to walk on the roads and cars can be parked on the designated parking bays. We are hoping to get back some customers who had stopped coming to our shop because hawkers had encroached half of the road width in New Market and they could not find a space to park their cars,” said the owner of a store in the area, who wanted to remain anonymous.

“If this arrangement remains, it will be good for all shopowners in the area. But I have apprehensions about how long this will stay,” said the trader who has his store on Bertram Street.

After they were evicted from the road, the hawkers have been trying to set up stalls on any vacant space on the pavement.

The shopowners said they have remained vigilant and stopped stalls from coming up outside the gates.

The street vending rules framed by the state government and notified in 2018 says that hawkers should leave the entry and exit of shops free. The rules also said that no stall by a hawker can be set up on a road (metalled surface).

The police had removed all hawkers who had set up their stalls on the road on Humayun Place on June 26.

There used to be two lines of hawkers on the road. This was in addition to the hawkers who were sitting on the lone pavement along the road. Gradually other roads in the New Market area were also cleared of hawkers and they were pushed back to the pavement.

The police’s drive came after chief minister Mamata Banerjee vented out her anger at a section of police, politicians and officials for allowing the grabbing of public spaces in Nabanna on June 24.

The KMC, too, started a survey in the New Market area on July 1. The survey, which is being done in five places in the city, is enumerating the number of hawkers and recording some information about their stalls.

“The survey will end in two or three days. We will analyse the information and present it to the five-member committee set up to regulate hawkers,” said a senior official of the KMC.

The five-member committee includes mayor Firhad Hakim, deputy mayor Atin Ghosh, mayoral council member Debashis Kumar, and ministers Aroop Biswas and Moloy Ghatak.