Scene I: Last week, members of a foreign delegation paying a courtesy call on mayor Subrata Mukherjee turned up late at his office on SN Banerjee Road for no fault of theirs. It had taken them ages to get to the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) headquarters from Grand Hotel, around the corner, with hand-drawn rickshaws and cycle-vans clogging the Bertram Street crossing near Roxy cinema.

Scene II: A few days ago, two French tourists were hurt and their rucksacks torn when they were hit by a cycle-van in front of Chaplin cinema, off New Market.

This is one pocket of the city almost held to ransom by a huge population of two and three-wheel carriages. And the mayor is hopping mad.

Mukherjee blames the illegal duplication of licences for pushing the combined population of hand-pulled rickshaws, cycle-vans and handcarts (thelas) to over a lakh, throttling the business district and arterial roads during rush hours.

“We must stop this to save Calcutta from turning into a medieval city, crawling with rickshaws and vans. And the only way is to stop the rampant duplication of number-plates,” said the mayor.

There was no point in building flyovers, widening roads and improving traffic management, unless the unauthorised rickshaw, cycle-van and hand-cart population was checked, he added.

Accusing a section of police of having a role in the number-plate racket, Mukherjee said: “There are at least four rickshaws for every number-plate issued by the CMC. Some policemen are involved in the racket.”

Every day, during rush hour, motorists on arterial roads like CR Avenue, CIT Road, AJC Bose Road, BB Ganguly Street, Brabourne Road, Burrabazar, Hatibagan, College Street and Shyambazar struggle to manoeuvre their vehicles through the maze of rickshaws and vans that overrun the streets.

According to civic officials, on paper, there are 5,945 hand-pulled rickshaws and 18,500 push-carts between Shyambazar and Tollygunge. Adding vehicles with duplicate number-plates would push up the figure to over a lakh, officials added.

To stem the duplication tide, the CMC has now decided to suspend distribution of number-plates on renewal of licence and introduce “anodised” number-plates, bearing the signature of a civic official.

“We hope to introduce the new number-plates from April. These will be difficult to duplicate,” said Soumen Mullick, assessor, collector and licence officer, at the CMC’s Gariahat office.