Street food has always been scrumptious. It will now be safe, too.

The central government has chosen Bidhannagar Municipality to implement the first Safe Street Food programme in Bengal, with the focus on setting up vending zones where any hawker can do business as long as the food is hygienic. That could mean the neighbourhood puchkawalla having to use gloves and switch to mineral water, and the chicken, mutton and egg roll vendor using branded sauces instead of the toxic-looking ketchup customers are used to.

“Hundreds of vendors do roaring business but the quality of the food served is often not up to the mark. We cannot remove these food vendors. So, the only option is to bring them under a controlled environment where they will be required to maintain a certain quality,” municipality chairman Biswajiban Majumder said.

The municipality has chosen a private company, Bose and Bose Consultancy, to execute the project, a senior official of the municipal affairs department said.

Bose and Bose had worked on a pilot project during the last book fair at Salt Lake stadium.

Officials said the municipality had started identifying the places in Salt Lake where street food vendors — there are nearly 1,500 of them — operate. The next step will be to choose sites within the 33-sq-km township for the proposed vending zones.

“For instance, the rows of street food stalls in Karunamoyee will all be removed. Some of these stalls will be shifted to Nicco Park and Sector V, where the demand for eateries is growing. The vendors will earn more if they adhere to our plan and customers need not worry about quality,” the official said.

The municipality will also monitor the sources from where the vendors procure raw material.

If successful, the project will be extended to areas under the Calcutta Municipal Corporation and civic bodies elsewhere in the state. The Union food processing ministry is financing it.