The Municipal Corporation of Dehradun (MCD) will start a survey to mark all the encroachments in the marketplaces of the city from next month. Talking about this, the Dehradun municipal commissioner Vinay Shankar Pandey said that the corporation was working on encroachment in market areas even before Covid-19 pandemic hit the State but it got hindered due to State wide lockdown in March. "We did not start the process of removing encroachments immediately after the State government permitted the operations of shopkeepers after lockdown because we knew that it was a difficult phase to earn livelihood for several shopkeepers. However, people have started to complain once again about the encroachments in the market areas of Dehradun," stated Pandey.

He added that several locals have complained to MCD against the encroachment in areas like Hanuman Chowk, Paltan Bazaar, Rajpur Road and Dhamawala stating that the encroachment in such areas have increased after the lockdown which is causing traffic issues among other problems. Therefore, the corporation will soon commence the survey to mark all such illegal establishments in the city, possibly the next month, informed Pandey. According to him, when the corporation marks all the encroachments, MCD will send notices to all the shopkeepers concerned. He added that such shopkeepers will receive three warnings from the corporation to remove their encroachments on their own and if anybody fails to do so by the third warning, the corporation will seal their shops till further action taken against such operators.