A hawker leader alleged at the town vending committee’s meeting on Wednesday that hawkers around New Market were “playing cat and mouse” with the authorities and still setting up stalls on roads violating street vending rules.

The street vending rules, notified by the Bengal government in 2018, said hawkers cannot set up stalls on a road, and they must leave at least two-thirds of the width of a pavement free for pedestrians.

“The hawkers who have stalls on the roads in the New Market area pack up their wares when they see police or officials of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation approaching,” said Shaktiman Ghosh, a hawker leader and member of Calcutta’s town vending committee.

The town vending committee, which has been empowered by The Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, to regulate hawkers in a city or town, gave its approval to these two rules.

“The hawkers come back within minutes of the police and the KMC teams leaving the place,” said Ghosh.

Ghosh said he raised the issue in the vending committee’s meeting.

A KMC official said the civic body, along with police, conducts regular drives in New Market area to keep the roads free of encroachments.

Debashis Kumar, the mayoral council member looking after hawker related issues, said the situation in New Market had improved a lot.

“New Market’s roads are much better now. We have been visiting the place regularly,” he told journalists after the meeting.

The Telegraph noticed last week that cars were being parked on Bertram Street, something that was not possible even a month ago as hawkers used to set up stalls on the road.

Hawkers’ stalls were set up on several roads in the New Market area — Bertram Street, Lindsay Street and Humayun Place.

A walk through the roads earlier revealed that there were two layers of hawkers on Bertram Street and Humayun Place.

At Humayun Place there were some hawkers on the pavement and some others on the road. On Bertram Street, there were stalls along the wall of New Market and another layer of hawkers on the road in front of them.

The committee also discussed whether hawkers sitting around a heritage building on Netaji Subhas Road, in the Burrabazar area, could be rehabilitated elsewhere.

“We discussed if the heritage building’s periphery could be cleared of hawkers. They will be given space elsewhere,” said a KMC official.