Kolkata, June 29 -- The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) is learnt to have decided to link eligibility for vending licences to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls while drawing up a plan to keep hawkers out of a 45-foot radius around 58 major road intersections as part of a drive to regulate street vending and reclaim pavements.
Under the plan, Kolkata Police will maintain round-the-clock surveillance at the identified crossings to prevent fresh encroachments on the city's principal roads. According to KMC, hawkers would also have to vacate both sides of the entrances to schools, colleges, hospitals, government offices, shopping malls and municipal markets. While no large-scale eviction drive is being launched immediately, the civic body intends to tighten regulation to improve pedestrian movement and restore the city's streetscape.
The Town Vending Committee has decided that applicants whose names do not appear on the revised electoral rolls after the SIR process will not be eligible for vending licences. Authorities will also re-verify SIR-related documents of 8,727 vendors whose vending certificates had already been prepared. Allegations that some union leaders facilitated illegal vending by foreign nationals will also be investigated.
In the first phase, 1892 roads, including those in Esplanade, Park Street and B.B.D. Bagh have been identified as no-hawking zones. Around 2000 more busy roads are expected to be brought under the restrictions in the second phase, with a joint civic-police survey scheduled to begin within 15 days.
Civic officials claimed that many names in the 2024 survey of 56000 hawkers were bogus, while hawker representatives maintained that the actual number of street vendors in Kolkata is close to 275,000.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.