The vendors of Baisakhi Market, who so long squatted under a rundown shed in an empty plot, started operations from AMP Vaisaakkhi mall on April 26. The day came after nearly two decades of wait.

Some of these vendors first set up shop around Baisakhi Island in 1979, and were pushed around by the authorities as and when construction began in the neighbourhood. Then in 2008, the Left-led municipality entered a public-private joint venture with AMP Universal Realty to build AMP Vaisaakkhi mall at the space they used to last occupy.

The hawkers were moved into a temporary market behind their existing space and were promised stalls in the mall once it was built. The mall opened in 2014, but due to administrative reasons, the stalls were not handed over to the vendors till March 2026. The temporary market in the meantime had deteriorated to a miserable state, and witnessed several accidents due to lack of maintenance.

At long last

“We had nearly given up hope of ever seeing this day,” said Atanu Giri, whose poultry stall is on the lowest of the three floors they have got, in basement 1. “Out of our 190 vendors, more than 50 original owners have died waiting to move into this mall. There is no politician left whose doors we did not knock to help us resolve this issue. We are so relieved today!”

On this lowest floor are chatal stalls selling vegetables, fruits, fish and meat. On the upper two floors are shops with shutters for grocers, tailors, salons etc. Lifts are available, but a few steps have to be climbed up or down nonetheless to reach them. “We installed railings along this staircase a couple of days before shifting,” said says president of the Baisakhi market committee, Mrityunjoy Singha.

Fishmonger Joydeb Mondal recalled how dirty and muddy the old market was and how the shed there would collapse without warning. “Once it fell on my head and I almost fell on my bnoti. I could have been killed! For decades, the politicians only promised the handover of our mall space ‘after the next election’. We are glad to have finally moved in.”

The market committee’s secretary Subhankar Dutta informed that the chatal vendors had paid the authorities Rs 10,000 for this space and the others paid Rs 20,000.

New beginnings

On the first day, customers were seen looking around and heard asking where their favourite vendors were seated. Ajanta Roy of BF Block found the market neat and structured. “But sanitation and garbage disposal need to be improved. I could smell the fish market from the lane outside,” she said.

Joyee Maiti of AK Block complained only about the lack of Internet connectivity. “I’m having to walk to the gate before my UPI payments are going through. I depend on this for all payments and cannot make so many trips up and down,” she said. Singha, the market committee president, said they would try to get a WiFi connection to ease the problem.

The market space has windows and is well-ventilated, but Sovaran Mondal, who has got space for this vegetable shop in a corner, was seen fanning himself frantically as the air circulation wasn’t adequate there. “I hope we can install electric fans soon,” he said.

Singha also said that the master plan had shown a large gate into the market from the Baisakhi Abasan side, “but that space has been blocked by the mall’s security staff who are monitoring CCTVs from there,” he said. “After elections, we shall sit and discuss these with the authorities. Maintenance of the market will also need to be discussed.

“The space where these hawkers would sit so far belongs to the urban development department, and they shall lay claim to it again now,” said councillor Anita Mondal, who dropped in to check on the shopkeepers on the first day. There is another plot adjacent to the mall that has over the last few years got encroached by hawkers too. “These are people who used to squat on the Baisakhi footpath. I got them shifted to the plot on condition that they would move out the moment the government needs this land,” she said.