The Madras High Court Bench here on Wednesday banned the use of polythene products in Courtallam as well as the adjacent Ayeriperi panchayat while modifying eight, withdrawing four and clarifying three of the 33 directions issued by it on June 24, 2014 for maintaining the environment at the site visited by thousands of tourists.
A Division Bench of Justices S. Nagamuthu and M.V. Muralidaran said that the ban imposed by another Division Bench in 2014 on sale of soaps, shampoos, oil and other things to anyone but for natives of Courtallam Town Panchayat needs to be modified to the extent that the ban shall be in force only in around the waterfalls and not in the entire Town Panchayat.
It also clarified that sale of such products shall be prohibited in toto and should not be sold even to natives around the falls area.
The distance upto which such ban shall be in force would be decided by the Collector and Superintendent of Police, it said and ordered that violators of the court direction should be dealt with in accordance with law.
In so far as another direction issued by the earlier Division Bench to open a bar in a State-run liquor shop, situated at about 1.5 kilometres from the falls, was concerned, the Bench led by Mr. Justice Nagamuthu clarified that the direction should not be misconstrued to mean as if the court had endorsed opening of bars in all liquor shops.
His Bench also withdrew a direction issued in 2014 to videograph those who consume liquor in the open and modified the direction to seize the liquor bottles and impose fine after agreeing with the police and other government officials that they had no authority to seize such bottles and impose spot fine on such people.
It ordered that the police authorities shall take necessary legal action against those who consume alcohol in public places and withdrew another direction issued to the Health Inspectors to visit hotels and eateries periodically to check the quality of food supplied to the people, seal unhygienic eateries and hotels and prohibit exorbitant charging of food items.
Pointing out that it would be difficult to decide what is an exorbitant price in the absence of the government having fixed the charges, the judges also recorded the submission of the Collector that only the Designated Officers under the Food Safety and Standards Act could determine the quality of food and the Health Inspector had no role to play in it.
The direction with respect to stationing of mobile court in the Courtallam area was also withdrawn and the blanket ban on entering the forest area was modified to the extent that people who want to visit Shenbagadevi Temple and a falls near it could enter the forest area after obtaining prior permission from officials of the Forest Department.
The court also withdrew its direction to the Collector to permit Public Works Department to collect vehicle parking fee since it was reported that only the local bodies were entitled to collect parking fee as per law.
