Bhopal: Bhopal Municipal Corporation has divided city into different zones to ensure that vendors are able to conduct their business activities smoothly, but to no avail. Classified as Red-zone, yellow zone and Green zone, the last two zones were marked for the vendors who owing to lack of permanent space had no option but to roam around the city selling their products door-to-door.
While Red zone was deemed as no development zone, Yellow and Green zones have been earmarked for vendors for putting up their temporary stalls and sell their products. These zones which aimed at providing a hassle free environment to the vendors to conduct their business activities, have failed to serve the purpose.
There is serious violation of norms in all the three zones, especially Red zone where illegal selling is rampant across the city. While temporary vendors have put up their kiosks in this zone, a few constructions have also come up in the area.
As per the rule, no vendor is allowed in the red zone and any kind of construction including installation of any type of stalls is prohibited. These norms have been violated time and again in connivance with local leaders and authorities.
Anti-encroachment drives conducted by civic authorities in these areas have gained no results. So far they have utterly failed to even get rid of any encroachment in prime markets of the city.
Similar is the situation in Yellow zone where places were to be demarcated for vendors where they were supposed to run business throughout week.
The Green zone areas, where hawker’s corners were set up have also been encroached. No permanent shop are allowed in these hawkers’ corners and hawkers are allowed to put up their handcarts on first come and first serve basis, but what one comes across is kiosks in most of these corners, which is sheer violation of the rule.
Pradeep Jain, additional commissioner when contacted said that the corporation keeps conducting drives against the shopkeepers who are found violating the norms.
