No-hawker zone at Charminar as yet

Charminar: The much-hyped proposal of limiting the hawkers beyond a designated radius around historic Charminar as part of the Charminar Pedestrianisation Project (CPP) has failed to take off. The proposal has failed to provide relief to the tourists at city's icon. There is not much space to walk for the visitors as the historic structure is surrounded by the hawkers.

The GHMC's demarcation process to restrict hawkers in a 50 foot radius zone at the historic monument remains in a limbo. According to observers, daily thousands of visitors visit the 400-year-old architectural marvel, but the visitors including foreigners find it difficult to have a leisure walk and enjoy the architecture marvel due to lack of pedestrian space and street vendors who sell fruits, clothes, bags, jewelry etc. at the Charminar. "The Charminar is a global landmark with a large number of foreigners visiting daily, sometimes these foreigners get irritated due to constant pestering by the hawkers," said Mohammed Ishaq, a visitor.

The hawkers are located from the monument to Mecca Masjid, Laad Bazar and Gulzar Houz sides, leaving no room for pedestrians. Officials are taking up several works as a part of CCP works but ground realities do not reflect in terms of providing breathing space for tourists. They must implement the 'no hawker zone' initiative as early as possible as it has been pending, he added.

According to reports, three times the works were initiated in the past, while last year in April, the GHMC officials marked, 50 feet space radius around Charminar for no commercial activities, but it was put on hold not to disturb the upcoming Islamic month, Ramzan and it has been kept pending, again in December, GHMC along with Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) took up the work of demarcation on the roads around Charminar and said this would be implemented soon and the day never saw the light.

"Though we demarcated the boundary line earlier, but this time, we are going to erect non-hydraulic bollards after completing the demarcation and this would make the areas completely prohibited for any sort of automobile entering into the restricted zone as well as commercial activities. To this, we got a clear call from the higher ups and are determined to complete the task," said an official.