Calcutta, March 4: The Grand Trunk Road will soon be free of encroachers between Howrah station and Serampore, if the government enforces a promise it could not fulfil earlier.

Illegal shops on both sides of the road are one of the reasons that shrank the stretch — to 24 feet from 80 feet.

Now as many as 182 traders have been served a second eviction notice. After the first one, only two encroachers had left.

Submitting an affidavit in the high court last Thursday, the public works department admitted that the width of GT Road had been reduced from 80 feet to 24 feet in some places between Bally Khal and Serampore.

“The road width near Joykrishna Library on Uttarpa-ra GT Road varies from 24 feet to 27 feet,” the affidavit conceded.

The affidavit follows an order passed by Justice K.J. Sengupta in December last year asking the PWD to file an affidavit on the status of GT Road from Howrah station to Serampore.

The court had also asked the department to produce the map of the road prepared during the Sher Shah regime.

Jasobant Rakshit, a resident of Uttarpara in Hooghly, had initiated a case early last year saying that district administrations of Hooghly and Howrah had failed to remove encroachers from the sides of GT Road.