NAPM demands halt to Kolkata demolitions, cites Supreme Court contempt

By A Representative 

People's movement groups have strongly condemned a wave of demolition drives across Kolkata targeting hawkers, vendors and slum dwellers, declaring that the drives violate Supreme Court guidelines and calling on the government to halt all coercive evictions immediately.

The All India Workers Forum and the National Forum of Urban Struggles of the National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM) issued the statement on June 13, documenting a series of overnight demolitions at railway stations and public spaces over the past month. Railway authorities demolished kiosks and stalls at Sealdah station on the night of May 16–17 under the Amrit Bharat Station Scheme. Similar drives followed at Howrah on May 16, at Dum Dum Junction on the night of May 31, and at Jadavpur on the night of June 7–8. In each instance, the groups said, families and small traders were given no prior notice and offered no rehabilitation. At Jadavpur, when hawkers, students and trade union activists sat peacefully before bulldozers, they were met with lathi-charges and arrests. "Elderly hawkers were left searching through rubble for remnants of their lives," the statement said.

The groups said affected communities had sought dialogue but been ignored. "Their demand was simple: If 'redevelopment' must happen, rehabilitation must come first. That demand has not been answered to this day," the statement said.

NAPM placed the drives within what it described as a national pattern of "Bulldozer Raj," citing research documenting a 379 per cent rise in demolitions across India over five years. The statement said this represented a shift from development-driven urban eviction to "a new, punitive use of the bulldozer as a political tool — one that bypasses due process, flouts constitutional protections, and falls hardest on the urban poor, informal workers — mostly from oppressed castes and religious minorities."

The groups said the drives were not merely unjust but illegal. In November 2024, the Supreme Court issued pan-India guidelines declaring that bulldozer demolitions reminded it of "a lawless, ruthless state of affairs," and mandated a minimum 15-day notice period before any demolition, warning that violations would be treated as contempt of court. Not one of the Kolkata drives complied with those guidelines, NAPM said. An interim order by Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharya of the Calcutta High Court separately stayed an Eastern Railways eviction drive targeting nearly 6,000 residents near Brace Bridge Railway Station, finding that no statutory notice had been issued under the Public Premises (Eviction of Unauthorised Occupants) Act, 1971, no hearing had been granted, and no order passed by a duly appointed Estate Officer.

Pushing back against the framing of informal workers as obstacles to development, the statement argued that Kolkata's economy depended on precisely those being displaced. "The jhalmuri seller at Sealdah, the fruit seller on a crowded pavement, the bookseller near a college, the tea vendor outside a station gate — they are not 'obstacles' to development. They are Citymakers: they are the reason the city works. Destroying their livelihoods does not build a modern city. It only builds a cruel one," it said.

NAPM demanded that no family lose their home or livelihood until the government guarantees a real alternative in the vicinity, that all redevelopment and eviction plans be publicly disclosed, and that genuine consultation take place with hawkers' organisations, trade unions and affected communities before any eviction. It also demanded an independent inquiry into the use of force and unlawful detentions at recent protests, and strict compliance with the Supreme Court's November 2024 guidelines. "The bulldozer is not the law," the statement said. "The Constitution is."