Eviction teams and police razed a cluster of stalls that had come up on a 100m stretch of a pavement and blocked the divider of the service lane and the main road in front of Gitanjali Park, near the Ecospace island, in New Town late on Thursday.

But on Friday, some of the hawkers again set up shop on the stretch in Action Area II. Metro spotted at least seven hawkers who set up benches under umbrellas and were selling tea and snacks.

The stalls, made of bamboo poles and wrapped in plastic sheets, had rendered the pavement useless. They had also blocked the median divider of the service lane in front of Gitanjali Park and the main road that leads towards the Ecospace island.

On Thursday night, a large eviction team from the New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA), accompanied by police, razed nearly 40 stalls. Several hawkers tried to resist but the authorities held their ground.

After the drive was over, tin and plastic sheets and bamboo poles were all that remained of the stalls, which used to sell a whole lot of items, including fast food and cellphone accessories.

This newspaper has reported that hawkers at three places in the township had resisted eviction attempts on Wednesday night, forcing NKDA teams and police to
retreat.

Debashis Jena, from Jyangra in Rajarhat, was selling tea and biscuits in the place where his stall stood. He said he would not budge from
the area.

“I had invested around ₹2 lakh to set up the stall here. I will not leave the place under any circumstance,” Jena said.

Asked how a stall made of plastic sheets and bamboo poles could cost Rs 2 lakh, he said: “We had to pay leaders in the locality. Nobody will let us sit here and set up the stalls for free.”

A senior NKDA official said a survey in 2019 by hawker surveillance teams of the authority had come across around 2,000 hawkers in New Town.

The official said they are suspecting that at least 500 more hawkers have set up stalls on pavements and thoroughfares since chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s statement that the drive to evict hawkers who had encroached on pavements and roads would be put “on hold” for a month.

“While the drive is on hold, no new stalls will be allowed to come up on the pavements,” Mamata had said at a televised meeting at Nabanna on
June 27.

NKDA surveillance teams have reported that the number of new hawkers has been on the rise across all three action areas of New Town.

“There is a spike in the number of hawkers with stalls on pavements and median dividers. Some are even blocking sections of roads,” said the official.

Shaktiman Ghosh, a hawker leader, said the survey conducted in 2019 had identified 2,500 hawkers in New Town and 800 hawkers in Sector V.

According to Ghosh, a fresh survey needs to be done but the survey teams should have representatives of hawkers.

“The New Town authorities want to rehabilitate the hawkers. We don’t trust NKDA or the police with rehabilitation. We will agree to rehabilitation if we have adequate representation in the survey team and the committee
that will allot stalls,” Ghosh said.

NKDA has built multiple hangar-like structures to rehabilitate hawkers. The structures 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.