For months, Dhaka’s authorities have been staging one footpath eviction drive after another. Teams arrive, makeshift shops are dismantled, goods are seized and hawkers are driven away.
Then, sometimes within days, they return.
On Wednesday, that familiar cycle took a more dangerous turn in Mirpur-10.
An eviction drive descended into clashes, several police personnel were injured, two Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) dump trucks were set ablaze, three bulldozers vandalised and a police vehicle damaged.
But beyond the violence lies a more fundamental question: Is there actually a long-term plan to reclaim Dhaka’s footpaths, or have repeated eviction drives become an exercise that produces dramatic scenes but little lasting change?
The experience of recent months raises that question repeatedly.
Authorities cleared illegal structures and hawkers from around Shewrapara metro rail station on September 25.
Five days later, hawkers had returned to occupy much of the cleared space.
Similar scenes have unfolded in Farmgate, where DNCC conducted another drive about a week ago.
At Taltola, a roadside food shop operated by a man named Mizan has been demolished several times, only to be rebuilt on the footpath. It was recently removed again.
The cycle goes further back.
On April 1, law enforcement agencies launched an operation covering Indira Road, Green Road, the Ananda Cinema Hall area, Panthapath and Karwan Bazar.
Illegal occupiers were warned, shops were removed and portions of businesses extending onto footpaths were demolished.
Within days, however, occupation returned to several of the cleared areas.
Evict, return, repeat
Since March, DNCC, Dhaka South City Corporation and the DMP Traffic Division have conducted regular operations in different parts of the capital, deploying personnel and equipment and, in some cases, imposing fines.
What remains far less apparent is what happens after the bulldozers leave.
There is little evidence in the repeated reoccupation of cleared areas that the drives are being accompanied by an effective mechanism to keep the footpaths free afterwards.
Nor has a comprehensive solution emerged for thousands of hawkers who depend on those spaces for their livelihoods.
Perhaps most tellingly, even a DNCC official involved in the operations could not say whether the repeated drives were being carried out under a specific long-term plan.
“Eviction drives are currently being conducted regularly. However, I do not know whether there is any specific plan regarding these operations,” the official told Dhaka Tribune on condition of anonymity.
The official said instructions for individual operations generally arrive only one or two days beforehand.
That uncertainty goes to the heart of Dhaka’s recurring footpath problem: eviction without sustained monitoring allows reoccupation, while eviction without workable alternatives leaves hawkers with a powerful incentive to return to the same pavements.
Mirpur erupts
Wednesday showed how combustible that cycle can become.
The DNCC operation began around 10am, covering areas between Mirpur-10 and Mirpur-14.
Around 10:30am, clashes erupted in front of Hope Market.
Hawkers said an electrical wire fell as DNCC personnel removed shops, starting a fire that damaged goods and heightened tensions.
At one point, hawkers hurled sticks and bricks at those involved in the operation.
Two DNCC dump trucks were vandalised and set on fire, three bulldozers were damaged and a police vehicle was also vandalised.
The fallen electrical wire caused flames to spread towards an area west of Baitul Quddus Jame Mosque. Two Fire Service units brought the fire under control within around 15 to 20 minutes.
Several police personnel were injured, according to DMP Mirpur Division Deputy Commissioner Hasan Mohammad Naser Rikabdar.
Additional police were deployed and the situation was eventually brought under control. DNCC resumed its eviction drive around 2:20pm.
DNCC Public Relations Officer Md Zakir Hossain said authorities deliberately avoid announcing operations beforehand because advance warning gives illegal occupiers time to prepare.
In Mirpur, however, he said hawkers had learned of the operation beforehand and were able to gather.
‘Where will we go?’
The city corporation insists pedestrians must get their footpaths back. Hawkers, meanwhile, ask a question the eviction drives have yet to resolve: where should they go?
Md Sohel Molla has sold goods in Mirpur-10 for 12 years. Having lost a leg in an accident, the footpath business is his livelihood.
“If the city corporation arranges a permanent place for us, we will move there. If everyone goes there, I will also go,” he told Dhaka Tribune.
Sohel alleged goods worth more than Tk1 lakh were taken from him during Wednesday’s drive.
“I am a disabled person. What am I supposed to do?” he said. “If there is no food in our stomachs, nothing else matters.”
Hawker Ismail Sheikh also said they needed either advance notice or somewhere else to operate.
“If they suddenly evict us without giving us anywhere to go, where will we go? We all have families,” he said.
Their demands do not alter the fact that footpaths are intended for pedestrians and cannot lawfully be occupied indefinitely for private business.
But their repeated return raises the question of whether enforcement alone can resolve a problem rooted partly in livelihood and urban management.
DNCC: We tried rehabilitation
DNCC Administrator Md Shafiqul Islam Khan rejected any suggestion that the corporation would abandon the drives.
“We want to give the people of the city a clean and organised city and keep the footpaths suitable for walking,” he told Dhaka Tribune.
“We will not allow the footpaths to remain under anyone’s occupation.”
He said DNCC had attempted to find a longer-term solution.
“I had initially tried to rehabilitate the hawkers who conduct business on the footpaths. I took various initiatives to provide them with a designated place where they could do business,” he said.
According to Shafiqul, however, hawkers were unwilling to participate in the proposed rehabilitation process and wanted to remain on the footpaths.
DNCC would therefore continue its operations, he said, until the pavements were cleared.
“We will continue our efforts as long as these occupiers continue to occupy the footpaths.”
That promise suggests more eviction drives are coming.
But after months of operations, the more difficult question is no longer whether authorities can clear a footpath for a day.
They demonstrably can.
