Smart vending zone to come up in Lucknow’s Charbagh soon

The smart vending zone, being developed by Lucknow Municipal Corporation, will ensure smooth traffic movement along with vending activities at the same time. Right from parking space for auto, rickshaws, buses, carts and stalls, everything would be demarcated with different colours

Lucknow The Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) is developing a smart vending zone in Charbagh, to ensure smooth movement of traffic and hassle-free operation of vending activities in the state capital’s busy area.

Smart vending zone is being developed by Lucknow Municipal Corporation at Charbagh near Ravindralaya. Municipal team also remove encroachments near NR Charbagh on Wednesday. (Deepak Gupta/HT photo)

Municipal Commissioner Ajay Dwivedi said, “The smart vending zone will ensure smooth traffic movement along with vending activities at the same time. Right from parking space for auto, rickshaws, buses, carts and stalls, everything would be demarcated with different colours. The orange colour would be for bus stop, purple for auto and taxi. However, such experiments in the past had failed in Aminabad, Alambagh , Mahanagar and Nishatganj where situation had gone from bad to worse.”

The plan for the vending zone had already been prepared after discussion and the consent of all the stakeholders, including the street vendors and different government departments, he said.

Dwivedi said, “In Lucknow, public space is limited, especially in areas like Charbagh, which is called the gateway of Lucknow. Everyone knows Luckow is a rapidly growing city, that’s why authorities struggle with finding practical solutions that meet the demands for these areas. As a result, street vendors often find themselves at receiving end. However, we don’t want anyone to suffer that’s why we are trying to regulate the vending in Charbagh.”

Girish Mishra, corporator from Sardar Patel ward, said, “Earlier, LMC had failed in regulating vending in Aminabad, Nishatganj, Mahanagar. This time we expect the LMC to regulate the things strictly.”

According to Mishra, there are around 60,000 street vendors in the city. Around 6,000 of them are in Charbagh. If this area gets disciplined, then this model could be replicated in other areas of the city too.