Didi shows why she's Mamata: I do not have the right to take away livelihoods

KOLKATA: She did not have the right to take away anyone's livelihood, CM Mamata Banerjee said on Thursday, professing her love for hawkers, three days since her 70-minute tirade on civic-issue mismanagement led cops and civic officials across the city to demolish hundreds of illegal shacks, freeing up urban public space - especially pavements - for citizens.
"You know I love hawkers," Banerjee said, adding, "I want to make a happy family with hawkers as well as other citizens, so that the city looks beautiful."
The CM's views on hawkers came during her speech in Nabanna, at a meeting convened to discuss hawkers and the encroachment issue. "I don't have the right to take away anyone's livelihood and leave them unemployed," she told her listeners: representatives of multiple hawkers' associations, councillors, ministers, administrative officials and senior police officers. "Lakhs of people run their families by hawking. I want to streamline hawking and ensure pedestrians and general citizens also get their basic rights to pavements and carriageways," she added.
At the meeting, Banerjee also suggested a slew of plans for street vendors - from helping them getting insured and protecting their stalls from fire to setting up separate hawking zones and allotting buildings and godowns, where they could park their wares at night, so that they don't encroach pavements and carriageways. "We should also look for buildings around hawking hubs that can be converted into godowns, where the hawkers can park their wares at night. If there are no buildings available, KMC should identify small plots where such buildings can be made. The buildings must be equipped with proper fire safety measures," she added.
The CM suggested that hawking at a particular place should be for "locals". "Many hawkers from outside often settle at parks. That cannot be allowed. Right to parks should be limited to locals. Why should outsiders be allowed to settle here? At times, they even move court, which grants them permission. But we need to make the court understand that parks should only be for locals' use," Banerjee said, instructing minister Moloy Ghatak to hold a meeting with the mayor and deputy mayor in this regard.
Banerjee asked five senior party functionaries - Firhad Hakim, Arup Biswas, Moloy Majumdar, Atin Ghosh and Debasis Kumar - to carry out a survey in Hatibagan, Gariahat, the Grand Arcade and New Market, to find out how the hawker encroachment problem could be sorted out and where legitimate hawkers could be relocated.
"But do not take out bulldozers," she stressed.
Suggesting specific hawking zones for neighbourhood hawkers, CM Mamata Banerjee said of the 61,000 hawkers who had applied for permission from KMC, 49,000 had been allowed, while the applications of 2,000 had been rejected.
"Make a separate survey, and if you find that even now some legitimate hawkers have been left out, settle them at hawking zones," Banerjee said. "But do not allow one hawker with multiple dalas. If there are two brothers, it's still fine but they all should be from local neighbourhoods," she added, instructing a team of officials to search for space to form multi-storeyed hawking zones, the ground floor of which, she suggested, could be allotted to vegetable vendors.