In Thiruvanmiyur, houses built on encroached road despite HC order

CHENNAI: Land use regulations matter little when you are part of a system that turns a blind eye to blatant violations.
Residents of Avvai Nagar, Thiruvanmiyur will bear testimony to the above statement, as they have had to live with encroachers who have built homes on a public road. The road in question is a 40-feet wide stretch called Ganapathy Road, which connects Avvai Nagar main road in Thiruvanmiyur with the East CoastRoad.Six houseshave been built on the road reducing its present widthtolessthan 15feetin a 200 m stretch.
According tolocal resident K Ramachandran, the encroachments started out as huts before upgrading to pucca buildings. “As an association, a few local residents had been campaigning to get the encroachments removed since 2009. But the corporation was deaf toour pleas,” hesaid.
Surprisingly, the encroachers have been provided water and electricity connections, and have also been assessed for payment of property tax by the corporation. Whileso, thecorporation issued an eviction notice in 2012 via the commissioner’s office. The squatters chose to fight the notice in the Madras high court by filing separate writ petitions.
The court set aside the eviction order in January 2014 becausethecorporation could not prove its ownership of the encroached road. According to case files obtained from the Madras high court, the bench comprising justices Satish K Agnihotri and K K Sasidharan ruled that the Mylapore-Triplicane tehsildar should measure the property and if revenue recordssuggestedthat the land belonged to the state government, only the government, and notthecorporation, had the right to evict the settlers.
Nearly four years after the ruling, Ramachandran said neither the corporation nor thetehsildar has initiated proceedings to implement the order. The Mylapore-Triplicane tehsildar did not offer comment when TOIcontacted.
A senior corporation official said that the delay in executing court orders was a coordination error between the civic body and the Chennai collectorate. “We will instruct our zonal officer (Adyar) to look into the issue and take action,” theofficial said.