CHENNAI: The Madras High Court on Monday ordered the Tamil Nadu government to introduce an e-pass system for vehicles entering the Nilgiris and Kodaikanal in order to decongest the hill stations during the summer, when they witness a huge rush of tourists.
A special division bench dealing with forest related cases, consisting of Justices N Sathish Kumar and D Bharatha Chakravarthy, passed the orders while hearing a batch of petitions regarding forest matters.
The bench directed district collectors of the Nilgiris and Dindigul to implement the e-pass system from May 6 to June 30, 2024 to avoid heavy traffic congestion and disturbance to movement of elephants.
The e-pass will be on the lines of the ones issued during the Covid lockdown period. The district collectors shall ensure that the visitors to these hill stations furnish details of their vehicles, number of persons and the number of days of stay, the bench stated. However, it added that local residents must be exempted from the e-pass system, giving them free access.
Moreover, the bench ordered the authorities to widely publicise the e-pass system across the country to create awareness among tourists.
Meanwhile, the Department of Forests, Environment and Climate Change, in a status report, informed the court that several measures, including registration of vehicles and scanning them through cameras in check posts, have been put in place.
The report filed through Advocate General PS Raman, assisted by Special Government Pleader T Seenivasan, disclosed that during the season, as many as 20,011 vehicles enter the Nilgiris on average everyday while 2,002 vehicles enter during the off-season through seven entry points. As far as Kodaikanal is concerned, as many as 5,315 vehicles enter the hill station per day during season while it is 2,100 during the off-season.
It also informed that comprehensive discussions were held with IIM-Bangalore and IIT-Madras, which were roped in for assessing the carrying capacity of these hill stations and measures to regulate vehicle movement. Both these institutions have expressed their readiness to conduct the study. IIM-Bangalore has sought six months time for conducting the study while IIT-Madras sought a year’s time.