Eviction drive in Silchar to get rid of illegal encroachments; Local hawkers allege discrimination against them

In order to lay claim back the sidewalks before the upcoming elections, the Silchar Traffic Police conducted a day-long operation on Monday to clear the footpath of the city’s roads of illegal encroachments.

Understandably, the police were met with considerable resistance from the local hawkers, who trade on the footpath. They alleged that the police are only oppressing the small traders in the name of freeing the footpath before the election.

“The administration is not giving small traders any place to do business, but is evicting us from time to time and hurting our financial stability,” they said. Whereas according to the traffic police, the footpaths in the city have been illegally occupied by some traders, making it difficult for commuters to move and rendering them at risk. Hence this campaign is being carried out, and in the future, all the footpaths of the city will be forcibly get rid of such encroachments to facilitate the movement of the commuters.

Since Monday morning, traffic officials have been working in groups to remove encroachments from the city’s footpaths. The eviction campaign was led by traffic officer Shantanu Das. The footpaths from the area adjacent to Officepara to Central Road through Devdoot point were cleared today. At first, the traders were asked to close the shop on their own. Those who refused the order and obstructed it, the police officers themselves forcibly removed the shops.

According to traffic official Atiqur Rahman, “The number of vehicles on the city roads is already high, so the commuters have to take a lot of risks to commute through the city as the footpaths are occupied. The students especially face the wrath of this encroachment issue as we recently saw a student stumble and fall on the footpath due to lack of space. More such accidents like that could happen, so we are running this campaign to prevent that. There’s no point blaming us as we are totally adhering to the law. In the future, other streets will be cleared off such encroachments as well.”

However, the traders said, “We are in financial trouble after the coronavirus infection and the subsequent lockdown. We want to get back to normalcy by trading small items. We have repeatedly appealed to the administration and the people’s representatives to give us a place where we can operate our businesses. But no one listens to us, and we are absolute without any backing. We do business on the footpath all year round, it is inhumane to suddenly demolish our shops without any prior notice. The administration only continues to harass us from time to time, while the big businessmen occupying the sidewalks building buildings which do not bother them at all. Even the local MLAs are afraid to open their mouths against those big businessmen. We ask them, why only discriminate against us like that? ”

The footpaths and sidewalks of Silchar have been raided several times in the past to clear the encroachment of local traders, but nothing fruitful came in the long run. After the clear out of the encroachments, the traders return after some gap of time to their work by rebuilding their shops. This creates difficulties while commuting and if any commuter protests, they get meted out with harsh words from the local hawkers. Even though police clear them out of the footpaths from time to time, their inability to provide any long-term solution to this crisis doesn’t help this issue as the traders and hawkers return to their usual business over and over again.