Shimla Ward Watch Lower Bazaar: Intruders impede the bustling marketplace

Residents of Shimla Municipal Corporation’s Lower Bazaar ward are bothered by a maze of overhead wires and merchants’ and unlicensed street sellers’ encroachment. (SMC).

Locals lament the everyday annoyance they endure as a result of encroaches and unlicensed street sellers. In the event of an emergency, the homeowners claimed that fire tenders would be unable to pass from the market owing to the web of overhead wires.

Every day, hundreds of people visit Lower Bazaar, making it one of the busiest markets in the town. In addition to a number of hardware stores, restaurants, and stores selling necessities, the market is mostly home to clothing and shoe stores. It draws thousands of people with its particular Sunday market. Shopkeepers sometimes encroach on the roadside to exhibit their items because of the massive flood of consumers and tourists, which causes congestion in the market.

Lower Bazaar resident Sufan Sood, who also owns a jewelry store in the market, said that several storefronts had overgrown the roadway.

“These retailers set up shop outdoors to showcase their merchandise, which creates traffic jams and annoys customers and other retailers alike. In an emergency, there are a lot of unlicensed street sellers that might cause traffic jams, according to Sood.

A ward resident named Vinod Jaswal said that dangling wires were becoming a major concern for the occupants. According to him, monkeys leap from these cables onto house roofs, damaging the property. He stated there had been several reports of sparking from these cables.

He regretted that while the firm had plans to subterranean lines, nothing had been done as of yet.

Lower Bazaar Councillor Umang Banga told The Tribune that the Chief Minister had brought up the overhead wire problem and that Rs 50 crore had been set out in the budget for it. She promised that subterranean wiring work would soon begin.

The council member said that the work will be completed in two stages. The first stage would include burying the cables from Chotta Shimla to Oakover. After determining the success rate, construction on the section from Oakover to CTO via Lower Bazaar would be completed in the second phase.

Banga said that the topic of shopkeepers’ and illegal street sellers’ encroachments has been brought up several times at the SMC’s monthly meeting.

Every Sunday, a crew is sent to remove unauthorized street sellers from the market. In addition to putting the offenders on notice, the crew seizes their belongings. If they continue to disobey the instructions, they will also face fines in the future, the speaker said.