The Madras High Court has ordered that all tourist vehicles that want to enter the Nilgiris district (including Ooty) and Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu will have to obtain electronic passes (e-passes).The e-pass system will be in place from May 7 to June 30. The move is aimed at collecting the data of the vehicles entering the hill stations during summer.
However, there is no cap on the issuance of e-passes, a special division Bench of N Sathish Kumar and D Bharatha Chakravarthy said.
The e-pass system does not apply to local vehicles.
The State submitted a report stating that more than 20 thousand vehicles are plying to the hill stations daily and the government is working on a report with the assistance of experts from IIT and IIM regarding finding the vehicle carrying capacity to the hill stations.
The bench also observed that overcrowding of tourists from all over the country to Ooty and Kodaikanal creating a huge trouble for the local residents, they couldn’t travel on the road for medical emergencies, since the roads were jammed with tourist vehicles.
Hence, the bench observed that tourists’ vehicles en route to the hill stations should be regulated in numbers to avoid overcrowding.