Settlers store their belongings at a bus stop at Ballygunge Phari and (above) hawkers take up the pavement in front of Kwality. Pictures by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya and Talat Salahuddin

Ballygunge Phari is under siege. Not from the peak-hour traffic that clogs the busy intersection, but from the illegal settlers who have taken over the pavements. They have forced residents to live in fear, pedestrians to step on to the busy carriageway, and shops and establishments to take a hit. The authorities, of course, look the other way.

Things are really bad along the eastern pavement of Ballygunge Phari, the stretch from Kwality restaurant to Old Ballygunge Place to Merlin Park. Three bus stops along this stretch now house their wooden charpoys. The railings serve as their clothesline. The entire pavement is used for cooking, bathing and hoarding all that they collect from vats and trash bins. And after the mayor handed over a third of the city’s pavements to the hawkers, these illegal settlers now sell tea and snacks from makeshift kiosks.

When asked, they call themselves “refugees” but are reluctant to say where they come from. On a lazy Sunday afternoon, the corner of Ballygunge Place and Gariahat Road turned into a virtual battleground with a roaring family feud being played out on the pavement.

And as the encroachers grow in number, the crime rate in this upmarket pocket of south Calcutta also rises. Snatching, car thefts and other disruptive activities are a regular feature with local residents struggling to cope with the onslaught.

At the Merlin Park government staff quarters, rag-pickers scale the walls and invade the residential complex regularly. Residents don’t dare protest for fear of abuse and assault. At the Kwality restaurant, footfalls have dropped and the management blames it on the encroachment and the rising crime graph. Elegance, a newly opened boutique, has had to deploy a security guard to keep the entrance encroacher-free.

Shoptalk

“I have no words to describe the kind of nuisance unleashed by these encroachers. We are running our restaurant since 1958 but this menace has been there for the past 15 years. Our customers are now scared to park their cars because of the high incidence of car thefts. It is telling on our business. Neither the police nor the civic body is doing anything,” said Santanu Sen, the manager at Kwality.

Civicspeak

“These encroachers have been staying here for 15 years but the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) has done nothing to remove them. Former mayor Subrata Mukherjee had once removed them but soon after the Left took over the civic board, they have come back in more numbers,” said local Trinamul councillor Rajiv Deb.

“The encroachers are a socio-economic problem and controlling them cannot be the duty of the civic conservancy department alone. The police, too, have to do their bit. We are thinking of carrying out regular drives against them,” said mayoral council member (conservancy) Chandana Ghosh Dastidar.

Policetalk

“We conduct regular drives against them. We bear the brunt of their abuse and often throw away their belongings. But they are human beings after all and they are back the very next day, ” said an inspector on duty at Gariahat.

Pedestriantalk

“All the foothpaths are overrun by these encroachers. Me and my friends avoid using the footpath here…. I don’t think there is anybody to look after this city. Calcutta is now a big no man’s land,” said Shabnam Mallik, a student of Class XII of Patha Bhavan.

Talat Salahuddin

Who do you blame for the encroachment on pavements? Tell southmetro@abpmail.com