Stalls smashed by eviction teams on Wednesday are back in business in parts of Salt Lake.

More than 30 hawkers reopened their stalls by erecting bamboo poles and hanging black plastic sheets on an 800-metre stretch of the pavement in front of the Geological
Survey of India (GSI) building opposite DL Block, not far from the Karunamoyee
intersection.

Many of the hawkers stacked crates of fruits and vegetables on the road.

Some roadside eateries set up tables and chairs for their customers not only blocking the entire 4-foot wide pavement but also a part of the road.

In GD block, part of Salt Lake’s Sector III, pavement-grabbing stalls dismantled by eviction teams from the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation and police sprang up once again at their old spots.

“We have been selling fruits from the pavement for 50 years. Where will we go? The civic teams had razed my stall but we decided to come back after speaking with our hawker union leaders,” said Chaitali Ghosh who runs a fruit stall opposite DL block.

The first residents of Salt Lake had moved into their Sector I homes in 1970. The plot distribution for Sector II, where Ghosh has her stall, began in 1979.

The eviction drives started after chief minister Mamata Banerjee said she was ashamed of the state of Salt Lake.

“I am ashamed of Salt Lake (lajja lagey). Why don’t the councillors of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation work? They are the elected body. They don’t sweep the roads. Should I step in? They don’t look after the lights, roads and water supply.
Neither do they take care of the problems faced by people,” Mamata had said on Monday at the meeting where she publicly admonished civic body chiefs and administrative officials over a host of issues, including encroachment of public spaces and government land.

The chief minister said elected representatives and the police were making money by allowing such illegal activities and directed the authorities to take action.

A senior official of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC) said on Saturday some of the hawkers were emboldened after Mamata announced on Thursday that the eviction drive would be put “on hold” for a month to allow them time to comply with rules.

“We had cleared out more than 100 hawkers across all the three sectors of Salt Lake. More eviction drives were in the pipeline. However, the drives had to be stopped. A section of hawkers has taken advantage of this and set
up stalls again,” a police officer said.

The last time Salt Lake witnessed large-scale eviction was in the run-up to the FIFA U-17 World Cup at Salt Lake stadium. BMC teams had evicted around 3,000 stalls from the pavements then.

Sabyasachi Dutta, the chairperson of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation, said: “It should be ensured that the hawkers don’t stage a comeback”.

“Although the eviction drive has been put on hold we can ensure that the pavements that have been cleared out are not taken back by the hawkers. Else the entire process of clearing them out will go in vain,” Dutta said.

Bidhannagar mayor Krishna Chakraborty did not take calls from this newspaper on Saturday. She did not respond to a text message seeking her views on the return of hawkers.