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Hawkers on Station Road removed
| Makeshift shops sell fruits, vegetables, flowers |
120 small stalls blocking half the road cleared
Hawkers say they were not given notice before the eviction drive
EVICTION DRIVE: Police remove makeshift stalls on Station Road leading to the Mambalam railway station on Sunday.
CHENNAI: Hawkers who had encroached public space on the Railway Border Road and Station Road leading to the Mambalam railway station were evicted on Sunday.
Police from the Ashok Nagar and Mambalam stations and traffic police took up the eviction drive in the morning. The makeshift shops sell fruits, vegetables and flowers. About 120 small stalls that had blocked half the road were also cleared.
The approach roads are now wide enough for rail commuters to make their way to the station easily. They had complained that the shops had made it difficult for them to reach the station.
The hawkers said they had not been given notice before the eviction drive.
According to Ashok Nagar police, there have been previous attempts to remove the encroachments, but the hawkers came back in a few days or weeks. Some of the fruit and vegetable vendors own stalls away from the road but prefer to hawk the goods on pavements.
A similar drive was taken up by the Chennai Corporation near the Adyar Thiru-Vi-Ka Bridge a month ago. Flower vendors there own shops inside a commercial complex but have again extended their stalls onto the road. S. Bhuvaneshwari, a flower vendor, said customers don’t come into the complex and prefer to buy from the first shop they see and, hence, the stalls were brought to the road.
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