Encroachers on a government plot on Prince Anwar Shah Road were issued a warning by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) on Tuesday to pack up by Monday, March 17, and let the civic body put up a boundary wall around the plot.

The KMC had started to demarcate parts of the plot at Lord’s More in early February and has been able to raise a wall on some portions.

In many other stretches where the boundary wall is supposed to come up, the civic body has faced resistance from owners of shops that have been running
from there.

The piece of land on 355 Prince Anwar Shah Road did not have a boundary wall earlier, and encroachers had a free run. The state information and cultural affairs department owns the plot, said a KMC official.

The process to reclaim the land from “unauthorised occupants” began after chief minister Mamata Banerjee mentioned this piece of land while speaking about encroachments on government properties and public spaces at a televised meeting in
June 2024. There was an attempt to free the land of encroachers in 2018 but it was unsuccessful, she had said.

Within hours of Mamata’s announcement, a police team went to the plot and collected the names, addresses and phone numbers of the owners of all the stalls.

There are varied claims about its size. While a KMC official said they were demarcating a 7.5-cottah plot, owners of the “unauthorised” structures on the land said it was 29-cottah.

“The Kolkata Improvement Trust, which has now merged with the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority, had the dimensions of the property. We plotted the land based on the map available with them,” said a KMC official.

Once its area was determined, the KMC set out to build the wall around its periphery.

Stalls selling food, vegetables and lottery tickets and a Trinamool Congress office are among those that occupy the plot. Many of the stalls were there on Tuesday.

Trinamool’s 93 block office still stands there.

Local Trinamool leader Biman Bhattacharya said on Tuesday: “It is likely we will be served a notice to vacate, and we will do so.”

The owner of a stall selling cigarettes said he set up the stall in the 1980s. “The KMC team that came on Tuesday asked us to vacate the place by March 17.
But where will we go?” he said.

A KMC official said they have also informed police about the progress so far and the challenges they have faced in raising the boundary wall.

While speaking at the meeting last June, Mamata had held politicians, the
police and government babus responsible for the mess along roads. She had underlined how ugly the city had become in some parts.

“Officials, the police, all — a group has formed. Wherever there is free land, you are helping its encroachment. I can see (encroachments) whenever I am on the road. The police cannot see. They have blindfolded themselves,” Mamata had said.