Forty-eight shops that were occupying government land at the Lord’s crossing on Prince Anwar Shah Road were demolished on Saturday in a drive by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and police.
The plot on 355 Prince Anwar Shah Road — measuring about 29 cottahs — was used as a market for years. Some stall owners had earlier told this newspaper that they had been running their shops for decades.
Attempts to free the land of the stalls had failed in 2018.
Attention fell on the “illegal” encroachment of the plot in June 2024 when chief minister Mamata Banerjee flagged the problem in a televised meeting. She had spoken about the plot.
“Officials, the police, all — a group has formed. Wherever there is free land, you are helping its encroachment. I can see (encroachments) whenever I am on the road. The police cannot see. They have blindfolded themselves,” Mamata had said while speaking about encroachment of government lands in the city.
After Mamata’s rebuke, the police and the KMC had urged the stall owners to vacate the place.
“Of all attempts, the latest were in March and May. On both these occasions we asked the stall owners to take away their belongings. We told them that it was a government land and the KMC has to clear the plot and raise a boundary wall around it,” said a KMC official.
“Many stall owners had already left the place on their own. When repeated warnings to the remaining ones to vacate the place failed, we decided to demolish the structures,” a senior KMC official said.
Within hours of Mamata’s announcement in June, a police team went to the plot and collected the names, addresses and phone numbers of the owners of all the stalls.
Later a team from the KMC surveyed and measured the land. They also built boundary walls around the portion that was still vacant.
“We took along officials from the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA), who are the custodians of the land,” said the KMC official.
A fire gutted some of the shops in 2018. A stall owner had earlier said that the government had offered compensation money to the owners to rebuild their stalls.
The stalls on Prince Anwar Shah Road plot included a store selling puja accessories, a momo outlet, a shack selling biriyani, a saloon and vegetable and fruit stalls. A Trinamool Congress office was also razed.
Sanatan Naskar, 37, who owned a fast food stall, said he was working at his stall when the KMC team came and started the demolition. “After they demolished the shop, I tried to retrieve what I could from the rubble,” he said.
Naskar said they were not given any notice or warning about the demolition drive.
A KMC official said they stall owners had been given “enough time” to vacate the plot. “There was some initial tension during Saturday’s demolition, but there was no serious resistance from the stall owners. A large police team was present to help us,” he said.