The Eastern Command of the Indian Army has flagged the encroachment of “defence land” at Hastings in a letter to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) and sought their removal.

Sources in the KMC said the letter, sent around 10 days ago, said there were several military establishments in the area.

The letter comes in the wake of the KMC launching drives across the city to remove and rehabilitate people living on pavements.

“We got a letter from the Eastern Command about encroachments in the Hastings area. The land is under the custody of the defence ministry,” said a KMC official.

“The letter mentioned that there are encroachments under the flyovers and approaches leading to Vidyasagar Setu. There are many military establishments in this area. The letter also pointed to the indiscriminate disposal of solid waste in the area,” added the official.

The official said as the KMC has begun a drive to rehabilitate homeless people to shelters, the Eastern Command wants the civic body to undertake a similar drive at Hastings.

Scores of families have set up homes under the approaches to Vidyasagar Setu. They have used tarpaulin sheets, bamboo and wood frames to build makeshift shelters.

The KMC conducted drives in four places in the city in June. Such drives have been conducted earlier, but KMC officials promised to have more frequent drives henceforth.

An official said they hoped that frequent drives, along with efforts to shift the homeless to shelters, would yield results.

The last drive across four locations managed to shift only one woman living on a pavement near Mullick Bazar to a shelter for the homeless near Chingrighata.

“We are planning more dates for similar drives across the city,” the official added.

The KMC’s drive to clear the pavements comes at a time when the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA), the custodian of multiple flyovers in the city, decided to build fences around the open spaces under flyovers to keep them safe from encroachers.

The Telegraph had earlier reported that the number of vacant beds in the shelters for the homeless in Calcutta was far fewer than the actual number of people living on pavements or under the flyovers.

The shelters for the homeless in Calcutta have only about 200 vacancies, while a 2018 survey found 7,000 homeless people living on the city’s pavements or under flyovers.

There are around 990 beds in the shelters, 790 of them are occupied.

Some of the pavement dwellers had earlier told this newspaper that they did not have a home, some said they had homes away from the city, but they were not big enough to house a large family.

A man in his 30s, who was living on the pavement near Gopalnagar, said his mother and other relatives live in Sandeshkhali, North 24-Parganas. He said the space
was insufficient for his family of five. “My wife and I drive vans and pick up plastic bottles. My children go to a free English-medium school in Chetla. I have to stay in Calcutta for them,” he said.

The Telegraph contacted the Eastern Command for a response, but there was no reply till late on Saturday.