In spite of Jharkhand High Court order in April 2016 to shift all the street vendors along the busy avenues of MG Marg at the six designated places around the peripherals of Main Road yet neither the civic body nor the traffic police personnel have been successful in their attempts to fix this glitch. Reappearance of the street vendors on the congested and busy artery lead to traffic snarl, leaving the denizens of the Capital
City in trouble during the hushed hours every day.
Interestingly, both Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) officials and traffic police personnel are playing the broken record and passing the buck on each other for the mess. None of the concerned authorities have yet figured out any concrete measures to tackle the situation.
“After Jharkhand High Court decision on rehabilitation of street vendors, continuous drive is being carried out at a regular gap to relocate them but so far none of them have left the place. All the six destinations fixed for them are within the peripheral of MG Marg. We cannot use force always on them. However, soon they will be shifted from Main Road artery to the decided places as per the court guidelines,” said, RMC Additional Municipal Commissioner, Bidyanand Sharma.
Although the civic body had selected six destinations after the Jharkhand High Court order to resettle all hawkers, none of the vendors are ready to shift at the designated places allotted to them as most of them fear to lose their loyal customers and are also at risk to mislay their share of business if they move to other destinations according to the orders of High Court released this year.
New marketing complex at Jaipal Singh Stadium is yet to come up and at least two years time is required for its complete construction. Particularly, all the six temporary vending zones at Jaipal Singh Stadium, Zila School premises, Harmu Ground etc remain deserted even on the festive occasion with RMC and traffic police department hardly paying any heed towards the issue.
After the Jharkhand High Court call on resettling the street hawkers, a three-week deadline for the authorities to remove vendors along the important artery of Main Road was immediately issued to both the civic body and traffic police department but despite several attempts the scenario at the busiest stretch remains the same even now. Traffic police blamed the human-resource crunch to deal with the situation and the mindset of vendors for this muddle.
“Our priorities keep on changing as per the preferences. The department lacks manpower to keep strict vigilance on street vendors always. It is immensely difficult to change their mindsets yet with full planning after November 26 the matter will be taken up with utmost seriousness. It is in our priority now to make Main Road congestion free,” added, Traffic SP Sanjay Ranjan Singh.
During the hearing of a Public Interest litigation (PIl) on April 9 in Jharkhand High Court, the bench of Chief Justice Virender Singh and Justice S Chandrashekhar ordered the authorities to move vendors along the itineraries of MG Marg to eliminate all traffic hiccups.