Chennai Corporation pulls down unauthorised bus shelters

By G Saravanan

Published in The New Indian Express on Aug 03, 2010:

CHENNAI: The Chennai Corporation hastened to pull down 377 bus shelters across the city after the Madras High Court on Monday vacated a stay on the civic body’s proposed removal of unauthorised bus shelters.
Sources said the Metropolitan Transport Corporation had, on court’s orders, handed over the bus shelters, which were being maintained by a consortium of private companies, to the Chennai Corporation to modernise them.
When the civic body sought to demolish the structures to rebuild them into modern facilities, the consortium that had been engaged by MTC went to court and obtained an interim stay.
However, MTC refused to back the private players, as it already made the ‘handover’ to the Corporation. The civic body then deemed the shelters unauthorised structures.
In Chennai city, MTC maintains about 500 bus shelters while the Chennai Corporation maintains 364 and all of them conform to a standard model.
After months of wrangling, the Madras High Court on Monday vacated the interim stay, allowing the civic body to pull down the unauthorised bus shelters.
The Corporation is now planning to construct modern bus shelters where required, and let out space for advertisements as a means to bring in sustained revenue.