Chennai, Apr 18 (PTI) The Madras High Court on Monday warned it would not hesitate to order the closure of all retail shops in hill station of The Nilgiris, if the state-run Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC) fails to evolve a scheme within a week to handle/clear empty liquor bottles thrown by reckless tipplers.

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The special bench of Justices V Bharathidasan and N Satish Kumar issued the warning when the batch of PIL and petitions taken up on its own by the court, raising environmental issues which affected the forest animals in the hills, came up for further hearing today.

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The bench was expressing its deep concern over the harm to animals and damage caused to the environment by the discarded empty/broken liquor bottles. It suggested a 'buy-back' system can be introduced to put an end to the menace. TASMAC can collect Rs 10 extra for this and the same shall be refunded if the empty bottles are returned by the buyer. Only such a scheme will serve as the lasting solution to deal with the problem in the hill stations,” the bench said.

However, the counsel for TASMAC doubted the viability of the suggestion.

The Nilgiris district collector's counsel told the judges that a similar proposal was sent to TASMAC two years ago but there was no response.

Meanwhile, the bench directed the Centre to file a reply as to why the labourers employed under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) could not be utilised for the drive to remove invasive weeds and exotic plant species.

However, the Additional Advocate General submitted that the MGNREGS workers could not be used for such works.

To this, the bench noted that there is a provision in the relevant act for utilising these workers in the afforestation activities.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)