Under pressure from the Centre, via the state government, the civic authorities announced on Wednesday that hawkers would be allowed to sell their wares on the streets if they complied with certain requirements.

Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya said the Calcutta Municipal Corporation would soon issue identity cards to hawkers to enable them to carry out business on select streets. He, however, made it clear, at a meeting with the Hawker Sangram Committee that vending would not be allowed on the footpaths of the eight arteries running through or converging in the central business district.

?Our objective is to provide and promote a supportive environment so that hawkers, after complying with the requirements, can earn a living on designated streets without causing congestion or affecting public hygiene. But under no circumstances will they be allowed to do business on the arteries identified by the high court as no-hawking zones,? the mayor asserted.

Sources said the move should be judged in the context of the Centre?s stand, which requires the state government to ?accept and implement? the national policy on urban street vendors at the earliest. The policy highlights urban hawking?s positive spin-offs, like poverty alleviation.

The government ? which had backed the civic body?s Operation Sunshine in 1996, resulting in the eviction of a few thousand hawkers ? resisted the policy, but gave in to the Centre?s demand considering the implications.

The mayor pointed out on Wednesday: ?A hawker-free city is neither desirable nor possible. What we need to do is limit hawking up to a point, beyond which it becomes a nuisance for the city.?

Former mayor Subrata Mukherjee slammed the initiative. ?Issuing identity cards to hawkers means rewarding the law-breakers on the one hand and insulting the law-abiding unemployed youths on the other,? he said. ?A good number of hawkers are actually freeloaders, who exploit the city but do not bother about the upkeep of its facilities.? Several members of the former mayoral council think that once the hawkers are provided with identity cards, it would be ?almost impossible? to displace them.

Some conservancy officials said that in the late-1990s, a group of CPM leaders had almost convinced the state government to issue licences to the hawkers. But the move had to be scuttled after then civic commissioner Asim Barman protested it when the government sought his opinion on the issue.

The state government?s stand on hawking could be gauged from what transport minister Subhas Chakraborty, one of those who had overseen Operation Sunshine, said during the day: ?Hawkers, like beggars, could not be fully banished from the city.?