The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) will conduct anti-encroachment drives on footpaths and public spaces three times each month. Street dwellers will be shifted to shelters.

Such drives conducted earlier had little impact. Long gaps between two drives or the absence of a repeat drive helped the settlers come back, said KMC officials.

Frequent drives within gaps of ten days will keep the pavements free, said officials.

The drive to shift street dwellers is part of a concerted effort by the civic body to remove encroachments of public spaces and government-owned land.

Forty-eight shops that were occupying government land at the Lord’s crossing on Prince Anwar Shah Road were demolished on July 12 in a drive by the KMC and police. A KMC official had said that the stall owners were given “enough time” to vacate the plot. When they did not leave on their own, the authorities had to demolish them.

Raising boundary walls around the site was underway on Wednesday.

“We have decided to conduct drives against encroachment on three days every month. We hope the repeated drives will have some impact,” said a KMC official.

On June 10, the civic body conducted simultaneous drives in four areas in the city — Gariahat to Ballygunge Phari, Hazra to Gopalnagar, Mullick Bazar to Beckbagan, and the Park Circus seven-point crossing to Beckbagan — and promised to conduct the drives frequently.

Metro spoke to some of the street dwellers. Some of them said they did not have a home, others said they had homes away from Calcutta, but were not big enough to house a large family. The June drives saw only one woman from a pavement near Mullick Bazar shift to a shelter.

Metro reported on July 6 that the Eastern Command of the Indian Army has flagged the encroachment of “defence land” at Hastings in a letter to the KMC and sought their removal. The letter mentioned that there are encroachments under the flyovers and approaches leading to Vidyasagar Setu, said KMC officials.

Drives to remove the encroachments in Hastings will be undertaken soon.

A 2018 survey found 7,000 homeless people living on the city’s pavements or under flyovers. At present, the shelters have only 200 vacant beds. According to civic officials, there are around 990 beds in the shelters, and 790 of them are occupied. There are 11 shelters for the homeless in the city.