Seeking a direction to the government to allow modified purse seine fishing, a public interest litigation (PIL) has been filed at the Madurai bench of the Madras high court. A division bench headed by justice M Venugopal on Tuesday directed the government to file a counter on the plea. Secretary of Dhanushkodi Parambaria Meenavar Nala Sangam, P C Amudhan filed the petition. When the matter came up for admission, the petitioner told the court that in order to conserve fishery, the state’s animal husbandry and fisheries department passed a government order on March 25 issuing notification. As per it, fishing by pair trawling or fishing with purse seine nets by any fishing vessel, craft, whether country craft or mechanised boat, irrespective of their size and power of engine in the entire coastal areas of Tamil Nadu in the territorial waters has been prohibited. Unlike the Maharashtra, the Tamil Nadu government without conducting any study has prohibited the fishing by purse seine nets. Due to the government order imposing entire ban on purse seine nets, the livelihood of poor fishermen has been affected. The fishermen who are in the traditional fishing activity have modified pursue seine nets. The net size is of 400 to 600m in length, which will go down up to 40m and will not affect fish shoal at the bottom of the sea. Besides, the issue was already taken to the Madras high court which in turn directed the government to review the duration of the ban period and to suggest further measures to strengthen the conservation of fishery. But, the government has not done it. Therefore it was necessary to issue a direction to the government to study the using of purse seine fishing by constituting an expert committee with representatives of fisherman community and to exempt modified purse seine nets from the ban, the petitioner said.