Cocking a snook at the Madras high court which passed a series of orders to regulate vendors on the Marina, the Greater Chennai Corporation has dumped nearly 850 kiosks at the Kailasapuram burial ground behind the state police headquarters. It is not just waste of ₹16. 5 crore of tax-payers money, but also a continuous contempt of court.
Designed, tendered and allotted as per the high court orders, the smart kiosks were to replace the rag tag push carts that lay scattered all over the Marina Promenade. The efforts were, however, comprehensively defeated by the vendor mafia numbering about 2,000 who complained many of the existing vendors did not get allotments, and the kiosks were too small.
