Calcutta, Dec 14 :     About 300 families of pavement-dwellers in north Calcutta are to be evicted as part of a drive to make the city presentable to the hundreds of visitors expected to be in town for the World Bengali Meet (Viswa Banga Sammelan), beginning December 28. The drive is being jointly carried out by the civic authorities and the police, who have ousted 20 families over the past week. The displaced people, with their meagre belongings, were carted away to an unknown destination. Senior police officers and the Calcutta Municipal Corporation authorities have justified the drive, saying it will not only present a cleaner and brighter picture of the city before the global meet but will also clear the pavements for use by pedestrians and reduce congestion on the streets. Ironically, the evicted families have been the beneficiaries of Nabadisha, a welfare scheme run by the police in collaboration with non-government organisations. ?Our Nabadisha programme is for the benefit of street and bustee children in all the 37 police station areas of the city,? a senior official of the North division said. Asked whether pavement-dwellers were being removed from the north Calcutta areas, the assistant commissioner admitted there had been instructions from the higher authorities recently to clear the footpaths. He also admitted that those being removed may have been the beneficiaries of the police programme. When asked where the families were being taken, the officer said he did not know. For the hapless pavement-dwellers, the drive could not have been more badly timed. With winter having set in, they are not only bereft of their tarpaulin shelters, some of them are also without blankets and bedding. Two days ago, Sundari and Shibani Sardar, ?residents? of about 10 square feet of a pavement next to the Sovabazar Metro station, approached Medical Bank, a local welfare organisation. ?Please help us. We have been living on these pavements for almost 10 years. Now they are telling us to leave. Where will we go? What will happen to our belongings?? cried Shibani, her two small children in tow. Medical Bank representatives have met the police at the local station and suggested that they take up a proposal with the CMC to allow these displaced people to stay the nights at Corporation-run schools. ?These schools are vacant through the night. They could stay and get some protection from the cold, on condition that they keep the schools clean,? one Medical Bank worker suggested. Though the move is over a week old, CMC chairman Purnendu Sengupta claimed he was not aware of the evictions.  ?I will make inquiries and see what can be done. But who will take responsibility if these people are given shelter at night in the schools?? he asked. Salil Chatterjee, who heads the Borough I committee, admitted that alternative arrangements should be made, ?but at the moment, there aren?t any.? It is paradoxical that these streetchildren are being deprived of whatever shelter they had on the eve of the inauguration of a global conference on children in Calcutta, at which such issues will be addressed.