Persons running the manual dyeing units on the Kaliyanoor Road protested the demolitions stating that the TNPCB spared the bigger units and targeted the manual dyers. TNPCB District Environmental Engineer (DEE) K. Gokuladas who headed the drive, told them that all illegal units would be removed without any bias.

The protestors then guided the TNPCB officials to a unit on a sugarcane field on the Kaliyanoor Road. “It would have been impossible to identify it without the help of the villagers. The unit with three winches was in a concrete building that looked like a house and was locked from outside,” the DEE said.