A day after mid-day's front-page exposé of the rampant use of plastic bags by flower and vegetable vendors, Environment Minister Ramdas Kadam took a round of Siddhivinayak Temple and rounded up five flower sellers flouting the plastic ban. Those vendors, and five others, were fined R5,000 each by the local ward officers.

The plastic ban was announced amid much fanfare just three months ago, with the BMC threatening strict fines of anywhere between Rs 5,000 to Rs 25,000. However, mid-day conducted a test drive across the city and found that plastic was not just freely available in markets, but the BMC's plastic-hunting blue squad was also missing in action. One of the market areas this paper highlighted was Dadar, where plastic bags were in rampant use.