Street food vendors making the most of city’s model roads

SURAT: VIP Road of Vesu, Gaurav Path and Udhna-Magdalla Road were considered model roads of the city built at a cost of crores of rupees by Surat Municipal Corporation. However, people making the most of these model roads nowadays are street food vendors, who have turned them to roadside restaurants with chairs, tables and all at various spots.

A 200-foot wide road gets reduced to just 60-foot because of flagrant encroachment by street food vendors from evening onwards. People come in their swanky cars which they park anywhere to enjoy the street food inconveniencing commuters.

“It is Surti culture to eat a pav bhaji plate for Rs200 on road,” a textile businessman said.

Ashish M Dubey, chief of Umra municipal zone, said, “We are running a campaign to free these roads of street food vendors. We have seized materials of 35 food vendors in the past three days. These vendors don’t have licence to sell their products on these roads.”

The encroachment started from Gaurav Path seven years ago. Before SMC officials could do anything, over 200 of them had encroached upon the whole service road, divider and footpath.

“People flock to street vendors more than the restaurants. We can’t do much until people stop encouraging street food vendors,” said a civic officer from Umra-Athwa zone. SMC estimates the number of food carts in the city at 40,000.