The Chennai Corporation is intending to frame a scheme for the beach hawkers without affecting their livelihood and provide certain facilities to the beach users in a regulated manner without affecting the environment and hygiene in adverse manner, the Corporation stated in its counter-affidavit filed in the Madras High Court.
The counter was filed in response to a miscellaneous petition arising out of a public interest writ petition.
Originally, while passing interim orders on the PIL, the first bench comprising Acting Chief Justice RK Agrawal and Justice N Paul Vasanthakumar on January 29 last had granted an injunction restraining the corporation from allowing unauthorised hawkers on the sands of Marina. Alleging that no action had been taken to evict the temporarily put up shops on the Marina, the present petition was filed.
The counter said the issue involved the eviction of about 1,000 shops temporarily put up over the years in the beach without any permission or licence. The corporation had not allowed anybody to run the business in the beach and never collected any rent or fees from them.
It was proposing to regulate the hawkers with a prohibition to put up any permanent structure and it had started enumeration work to identify the hawkers and it would require three months time to implement such scheme.