Street hawkers in at least three places in New Town resisted an eviction attempt late on Wednesday and forced teams made up of New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) personnel and cops, tasked with removing pavement-grabbing stalls, to retreat.

Calcutta has seen many failed eviction drives where the authorities backtracked at the slightest hint of resistance. Wednesday night’s drive was no different.

Multiple eviction teams, each escorted by a large number of cops from the Bidhannagar commissionerate’s New Town zone, had late on Wednesday gone to dismantle stalls that have mushroomed on walkways near Ecospace in Action Area II; opposite Orchid’s The International School, near Unitech Intersection; and along the Greenwood Park Extension housing complex in Action Area I.

All the teams carried bulldozers and earth-moving equipment.

An NKDA official said their hawker surveillance teams had told the hawkers repeatedly in the past couple of weeks that their stalls would be dismantled.

A large number of hawkers have been allotted stalls at markets built by the NKDA to rehabilitate them, said a senior official of the NKDA who asked not to be named.

Another official who accompanied the eviction team that had gone to raze the stalls near the Ecospace island said they had barely pulled down three stalls when a large group of hawkers started an agitation.

“The hawkers surrounded our men and started shouting slogans. Several of them forced the bulldozer drivers to get off their vehicles,” the official said.

Despite repeated police announcements, the hawkers refused to budge.

On Thursday afternoon, Ganesh Shil, who runs a stall that sells fast food and biryani near Ecospace, said while handing plates of biryani to customers that all the hawkers in the area have resolved to stay put.

“We succeeded in scaring away the NKDA teams and the cops. We will do it every time they try to raze our stalls,” said Shil.

Asked why they are refusing to shift to the markets built for them, Shil said his business would take a hit as the stalls there are small and few customers would visit the markets.

A senior officer of the Bidhannagar commissionerate said they had to retreat as they did not want to “escalate the situation”.

“We were there to protect the NKDA teams. We consulted senior officials from the authority and they decided against pressing ahead fearing a law and order situation,” the officer said.

Tapas Chatterjee, the MLA of New Town-Rajarhat, told The Telegraph on Thursday
that chief minister Mamata Banerjee had asked all eviction drives to be put
on hold.

“The chief minister has said all eviction drives should be put on hold. I will try
and find a solution to this issue and ask the hawkers to shift to the markets built
for their rehabilitation,” Chatterjee said.

On June 26, the police and NKDA teams had refused to back down when faced with similar protests behind Coal Bhavan in AF Block, a stone’s throw from Nazrul Tirtha.

The authorities had managed to clear a pavement despite the fact that the hawkers’ protest continued for a couple of hours.

NKDA has built multiple hangar-like structures to rehabilitate hawkers. The markets can accommodate 900 hawkers. While most of them are still empty, the authorities are building another set of hangars that can accommodate 400 more hawkers.

Large swathes of New Town’s walkways and even sections of roads have been taken over by hawkers selling vegetables, mobile phone accessories and sundry
other items.