Chief minister Suvendu Adhikari on Friday asserted pedestrians’ right to pavements, reminded hawkers that he was accountable to the people who had voted him to power, and urged them to move away.

Suvendu said no one had the right to encroach on pavements, and that his government would look after “the interests of the people over those of an individual or a group”.

“Hawkers can move to unused markets and spaces. I shall consider your case from a humanitarian aspect if you are sitting on vacant land,” the chief minister said.

“People have a right to walk on pavements. No one has the right to encroach on a pavement. The people have elected me; I am accountable to the people,” he added.

“No one has given me the right to hand over to some people the wide roads of Calcutta and the pavements meant for pedestrians. People’s rights will get the highest priority. The interests of an individual or a group will not be the priority.”

Suvendu went on to say: “The people did not make me the chief minister so that you would take over the road in New Market in a way that even motorcycles cannot pass; (so that) Rajabazar would go out of control (and) you will do whatever you like in Kidderpore and Metiabruz.”

Hawkers — a term that in Calcutta parlance also covers the owners of illegal, makeshift stalls built on encroached space — have since Independence and Partition gobbled up pavements across the city, the process escalating further in the last two decades.

Pedestrians have been forced onto the roads in several parts of Calcutta because there is no space to walk on the pavements. Consequently, Calcutta’s narrow roads have become deadlier.

Residents and licensed shop owners in Hatibagan, Gariahat, Burrabazar, New Market, Park Circus and Kasba complain that illegal stalls have blocked the entrances to their homes or businesses — sometimes cutting off potential customers’ view of their establishments from even a few yards away.

In the absence of any action by police or the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, they say, they are often forced to plead to the hawkers and their leaders to leave some space near their entrances.

Some of Calcutta’s historical edifices are cut off from sight by stalls.

Over the years, all governments have raised the same hope that Suvendu did on Friday, but neither the Left nor Mamata Banerjee made a sincere effort to bring about change.

With the hawkers enjoying varying degrees of political backing, the number of stalls have kept increasing and the space available shrinking.

In the Oberoi Grand Arcade, for example, the number of hawkers has allegedly multiplied fivefold over the past two decades.

Suvendu urged the hawkers to make use of government schemes.

“The UDMA (urban development and municipal affairs department) will start government schemes. You can take advantage of the central labour department’s schemes and other benefits,” he said.

Since the BJP government came to power in Bengal in May, many stalls have been demolished at railway stations and on plots owned by the railways. Police and paramilitary personnel provided support during the drives.

Some of these actions, such as the demolition of 35 stalls on a railway plot in Jadavpur, witnessed protests by Left bodies that led to the use of force by the police and arrests. Several court cases have been filed.

Critics have alleged that eviction notices were not served before the “bulldozers” arrived, and that the instant demolitions flouted court-mandated norms.

Calcutta’s roads have seen no eviction drives against illegal stalls under the new government so far.

After Suvendu’s comments, several hawkers expressed fear about their future in a job-starved state.

A New Market hawker said: “Many hawkers who moved to relatively less-crowded neighbourhoods lost their business in the past.”

According to street vending rules notified by the state government in 2018, hawkers’ stalls can take up only one-third of the width of a pavement. They cannot occupy any portion of a road, a rule blatantly violated on Bertram Street and Humayun Place, for example.

The street vending rules also say that there cannot be stalls opposite each other across the same stretch of pavement.

Residents of shopping hubs like Gariahat said hawkers used their balconies and homes to hang overhead tarpaulin sheets, overruling objections from the houseowners and creating a fire hazard.

A fire in a pavement stall in Gariahat in 2019 spread to the building in front of it. Several homes and shops were gutted.