The Chennai Corporation, which on Friday started removing bottlenecks to pedestrian movement, had to suspend it midway as the traffic police sensed an impending ‘law and order' problem in Royapuram zone in opposition to the eviction drive.
After a number of residents requested the Chennai Corporation to take action against commercial establishments that had encroached upon pavements in various zones, the civic body has started collecting data on encroachments at the zonal level.
In Royapuram zone, the zonal-level officials decided to initiate action against encroachments on various roads including Monegar Choultry Road, NSC Bose Road, G A Road, Mannar Sami Koil Street and Ibrahim Salai.
The Corporation officials started encroachment-removal drive on Mannar Samy Koil Street, a bus route road, and demolished portions of encroachments made on the pavement.
Restless crowd
After portions of over nine shops causing hindrance to pedestrian movement were removed, the gathering of onlookers and shopkeepers seemed to become agitated, according to pplice.
Concerned about the gradual increase in the size of the crowd, the police at the spot persuaded the civic body officials to suspend the drive.
The officials decided to leave the place before the situation worsened and left the place in a hurry even before media persons reached the place on coming to know of the drive by noon.
Corporation officials said that the many of the shop owners had agreed to remove encroachments on their own in two days.
The officials said they will take action if the shopkeepers failed to remove the encroachments within the stipulated time.
