Mayor Sabyasachi Dutta took the hawker issue by the horns as he spoke to Sudeshna Banerjee from Tripura.

On hawkers doing business on sheets after getting the warning last weekend...

The eviction of illegal encroachers is a continuing process. This hide-and-seek cannot go on. I have other work, so has the police. They have been warned over public address system. If they do not obey, the law will take its course by way of confiscation of goods. 

On reports of MLA Sujit Bose asking hawkers to shift business inside the blocks...

I am not aware who has promised or advised them what. If you are not agreeable to having hawkers do business at your doorstep tell them. If you are scared, tell the police. It is not as if they would be bold enough to hit or kill you. As long as I am in the (mayor’s) chair I will not allow illegal occupants — be it hawkers or slum-dwellers — on the pavements of Salt Lake.

On the hawkers who were allowed to set up permanent shacks by councillors on the pavements towards the end of the Bidhannagar Municipality’s tenure...

Those number barely three or four hawkers per ward. There is a case on in court filed by a BJ Block resident. We will abide by the court’s decision.

On hawkers in New Town...

You must remember that most hawkers in New Town are land losers. So they have sympathetic ground. Their case cannot be equated with those in Salt Lake who are not local residents. Rather, they are like the residents of Duttabad, the original inhabitants. 

On rumours that many of the hawkers in Salt Lake are from across the border...

I should not directly comment on that. All I can say is something is wrong somewhere. Those who were in charge in the earlier days — from Dilip Gupta and Biswajiban Majumdar to Anita Mondal and Krishna Chakraborty — must have lacked the political will to clear the pavements. Why else did they not do it? The law cannot operate in different ways at the same place. If I am strict about enforcing the law with the original lessees, I cannot look the other way for those who have suddenly settled here without documents out of nowhere.

On displaced hawkers taking up space on empty plots...

Whoever is the owner of those plots — urban development or irrigation department — has to deal with them. That is why I am not touching the huge slum next to the Central Park fairground. The land belongs to the urban development department. All I can say I have belled the cat. It is upto the residents now to keep it that way.

Counterpoint

We have clear-cut policy on hawkers that seeks to rehabilitate them as we don’t want to deny livelihood to poor people. I agree that we should not let any new hawkers set up stalls on the pavements of the township. I have spoken to minister Firhad Hakim. He has asked me to look for space where the hawkers can be rehabilitated.

— Sujit Bose, Bidhannagar MLA

The policy states that they must be rehabilitated. We are looking at options to do so in Salt Lake and may construct new markets if we get the space.

— Firhad Hakim, Urban development and municipal affairs minister