Early Thursday, the Coimbatore Corporation began removing shops that had encroached Then Vadal Street near T.K. Market for 35 years.
By afternoon, the Corporation had removed all the 88 makeshift vegetable and fruit shops whose traders had squatted on the Street, blocking traffic movement from Raja Street on the north to Big Bazaar Street on the south.
The Corporation team led by Town Planning Officer in-charge S. Ravichandran and Assistant Town Planning Officer, Central Zone, A. Senthil Baskar also removed a building that housed a police outpost on the south, the wall that ran along both sides of the Street, said the Market sources.
The team demolished three shops and another building inside the Market as well.
By 5.30 a.m. or so, the Corporation with the help of police barricaded the market, blocking entry from all sides.
In the presence of nearly 100 police personnel and with help from a dozen earth movers and lorries, the Corporation first demolished the encroachments within the Market and then moved on to the Then Vadal Street.
The Corporation removed the encroachments on the street to comply with a Madras High Court order.
Though the order did not mention anything on the encroachments inside the Market, the Corporation removed the three shops and another building to not give room for any communal tension, the Market sources said.
The group that was to be evicted from the Then Vadal Street, at a meeting with the Corporation Commissioner a few days ago, demanded that the civic body also demolish encroachments within the Market, which it said was under occupation of people belonging to the opposite camp.
In response, the Corporation had said that it would not distinguish between one type of encroachment from another and in keeping with the response, the Corporation had removed the encroachments inside the Market as well, the sources explained. The Corporation sources said that the civic body, after removing the makeshift structures of the 88 vendors and demolishing the compound wall, had started removing the waste and debris so as to throw open at the earliest the Then Vadal Street for traffic.
₹60,000 a day
The demolition, the sources also said, would help the Corporation because the 88 traders would start paying daily rent to the Corporation. They were hitherto paying a syndicate, which was daily collecting over ₹ 60,000 a day, the Market sources added.