Greater Chennai Corporation has assured the Madras high court that appropriate actions will be taken against 5,674 identified unauthorised structures in Royapuram. The corporation further undertook to initiate similar actions in other zones and file a status report before the court.
The submissions were made by corporation commissioner G Prakash during a virtual hearing. Recording the submissions, a division bench of Justice M Sathyanarayanan and Justice R Hemalatha adjourned the next hearing to February 5, 2021.
The issue pertains to a PIL moved by lawyer N Rukmangathan seeking action against the 5,674 unauthorized and deviated constructions that have sprung up in the city.
While hearing the petition on November 24, the bench censured the civic body for failing to act against identified unauthorised constructions and directed that the commissioner appear before it to give an explanation for the inaction. “With as many encroachments in the city alone, there will be many more across the state, but the authorities are failing to act on them,” the court had said. Stating that the authorities have not learned any lessons from the 2015 floods, the court warned that it would be constrained to summon the state chief secretary if inaction continued.
According to the petitioner, he obtained information about the unauthorised constructions through an RTI application. Alleging that the authorities are adopting a selective approach in acting upon such illegalities, the lawyer said, “There are 5,674 deviations that have been identified. But stop work notices were issued under the Town and Country Planning Act to only 1,191 violators.”
If zone V (Royapuram) alone contains nearly 5,000 buildings in violation of rules, then there would be close to 75,000 to 1,00,000 such buildings collectively in the 15 zones under Greater Chennai Corporation, he said.