A pocket of Calcutta, notorious for congestion, looked like a curfew had been clamped.

Shops were shut, roads were deserted, paramilitary personnel were on patrol and scared onlookers peeped through closed windows and terrace parapets.

All residents within 200 metres of the buildings to be razed had been asked to move out.

A woman was crying, standing outside one of the buildings being torn down by a monstrous machine.

She said the factory had a trade licence and other permissions, but not the no-objection from the fire services department.

Saiqa Jannat, whose sister’s house was being demolished, alleged that the family was not given enough time to collect their documents and belongings.

"By 5pm, we saw the bulldozers arrive. We had many important factory papers inside, and a shipment worth nearly ₹1 crore was ready, but they did not even allow us to show the documents. We are as Indian as anyone else, educated and contributing members of society. We are as much Calcuttans as others, yet we were thrown out of the house within an hour,” she said.

GJ Khan Road in Tiljala looked like a conflict zone.

Along with the uniformed and armed personnel, there were two bulldozers and an army of men wielding sledgehammers, who had taken over the once-busy road.

The bulldozers were at work right outside the connected buildings where a fire on Tuesday killed two people and injured three others.

"There is hardly any space on the road on any usual afternoon. The evenings are even worse. The road is narrow. There are two-wheelers parked on the road, carts selling fruits or other stuff and many people out on the road," said a trader in his 60s.

The demolition job started less than three hours after chief minister Suvendu Adhikari announced that the two illegal Tiljala buildings would be razed.

He added that power and water supply to illegal buildings and factories would be disconnected.

“Through the power secretary, the CESC has been asked to conduct an internal audit to identify buildings without sanctioned plans but housing illegal factories, especially in Kasba, Tiljala, Mominpore and Ekbalpore, and stop electricity supply to them,” Suvendu said.

Tiljala is to the right of the connector when someone is travelling towards Science City from Park Circus. Many buildings here house small factories, workshops and people's homes.

Most of these units, like the one that caught fire on Tuesday, manufacture leather goods. "The number of such factories has reduced over the years after the tanneries were shifted to Bantala, but there are still many buildings with factories," a resident said.

Residents of some of the other neighbourhoods that Suvendu mentioned during Wednesday's news conference said they welcomed the government's intent to regulate construction. Still, they asserted that the drive "should not be restricted to specific neighbourhoods".

"It is true that there is a lot of illegal construction in the Ekbalpore-Mominpore area, but illegal constructions are rampant in Burrabazar or many other parts of central Calcutta. In Ekbalpore-Mominpore, it is mostly small units stitching clothes and making readymade clothes," said the man.