Protesters allege of forced eviction due to the ongoing FIFA World Cup matches

Hours before the first match of the Kolkata leg of the FIFA Under 17 World Cup beganat the Salt Lake Stadium, hawkers and roadside dwellers staged a massive protest demonstration at Sealdah in north Kolkata against an eviction drive undertaken by the civic authorities at Salt Lake in the eastern fringes of the city.

Thousands of hawkers and slum dwellers gathered at the Sealdah Railway Station in the afternoon amid heavy police deployment.

Slogans raised

Slogans were raised not only against the Salt Lake civic body Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) mayor Sabyaschi Dutta, but also against the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government, which a section of the protesters accused of “forced and illegal eviction”.

The agitators under the banner of the Joint Forum Against Eviction threatened to launch a larger agitation after the Under 17 World Cup matches in the city, if the BMC authorities did not provide “proper compensation and resettlement” to the evicted hawkers and slum dwellers. According to activists, “10,000 slum dwellers and hawkers” have been evictedand 7,000 more are facing the threat of eviction.