Extend liquor bottle buy-back scheme throughout TN: HC

Chennai: A special bench of the Madras High Court on Friday directed the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (Tasmac) to come out with a liquor bottle buy-back scheme to be enforced throughout the state.

TASMAC is the sole government agency empowered to sell liquor in Tamil Nadu.

The bench of Justice S N Sathish Kumar and D Bharatha Chakravarthy gave the direction when the batch of PIL and others initiated by the court raising environmental issues, which affected the forest animals in the hills, came up for further hearing today.

Earlier, Tasmac MD, to a specific question from the bench, replied that the Corporation was facing various problems in places like the Nilgiris and other hilly areas, where the scheme has been introduced recently, following a direction from the bench. What is the difficulty, the bench asked and said littering bottles in hill areas, which injured the wild animals, was a real menace and directed Tasmac to come out with a comprehensive bottle buyback scheme for entire Tamil Nadu by July 15 and work out the modalities.