Kolkata: The Kolkata Municipal Corporation is set to make all municipal markets hawker-free. The exercise will begin from New Market and will later be implemented in phases across all major markets to make them encroachment-free. The matter was discussed on Saturday afternoon at a Town Vending Committee meeting at the civic headquarters.The KMC market dept officials raised the issue of heavy encroachment in front of all major city markets and said the civic body’s market dept had a standing order of evicting all encroachers from 45 metres of a marketplace. However, the hawker representative present at the meeting objected to such a plan, raising the concern that thousands of hawkers will be left jobless.The civic officials, though, said the KMC wouldn’t conduct any drive to remove the hawkers without a rehabilitation package. “We may take up the case of New Market as an instance and try to make the carriageways and pavements around it encroachment-free. Later, we will implement the same in other major markets in phases,” said an official. But, according to Saktiman Ghosh, the chief of Hawker Sangram Committee, they would not agree to any such proposal without proper rehabilitation package.During the meeting, the KMC officials and hawker representatives agreed to conduct a fresh survey of no-hawking zones across the city. “Currently, we have 1,892 no-hawking zones. But we need to conduct a fresh drive to find out if more numbers can be added to the list,” said a KMC official.