The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has found that only about 8,500 hawkers on Calcutta’s pavements have set up stalls adhering to street vending rules. The remaining vast majority have either gobbled up more space on the pavement than permitted or encroached on the roads.

A survey about a couple of years ago found 55,000 hawkers in Calcutta.

The KMC, custodian of the city’s pavements and roads, has planned to hand over street vending licences to the 8,500 hawkers between August 16 and Durga Puja in late September.

KMC sources said that by handing over licences to only 8,500 vendors, the civic body hopes to lure others to make amends and follow rules.

“It will send a message to hawkers that if they follow street vending rules, the hawkers will get priority in receiving street vending licences,” said Debashis Kumar, the mayoral council member of the KMC in charge of hawker-related issues.

“In the first phase, we will hand over vending licences to 8,500 hawkers who have followed all rules. We have identified 6,000 more vendors with relatively minor violations. They will be asked to make changes in their stalls so that no rule is flouted. Whoever does that will be handed over vending licences in the next phase,” said Kumar, also the co-chairperson of the city’s town vending committee.

According to the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Hawking) Act 2014, every city and town in West Bengal can have such a town vending committee.

The street vending rules framed by the state government do not allow a vendor to set up a stall on more than one-third of the width of a pavement. The remaining space should be left free for pedestrians. No stall can occupy any portion of a road, the rules say.

Across Calcutta, the rules are violated with impunity.

The civic body, police, and members of the town vending committee, which included hawker leaders, surveyed multiple streets of Calcutta in 2023. The survey found about 55,000 hawkers in the city. Hawker leaders dispute the number and claim the actual hawker count in Calcutta is much higher.

“The survey did not cover many streets, and the actual number of street vendors will be more,” said a hawker leader.

Debashis Das, a hawker leader and a member of the vending committee, said vendors will not get a street vending licence unless they adhere to all rules.

“To get a licence, they must follow rules,” said Das.

Kumar said a vending license will give hawkers some legitimacy and will open
the doors of banks to avail loans.

Kumar said the civic body will resume drives in the New Market area from next week. The drives will be conducted daily to ensure that the hawkers follow street vending rules. A few such drives were conducted a couple of months ago, but it had to be put on hold.