Chennai: The Madras high court has directed the Tamil Nadu housing secretary to measure the width of the road and the flyover nearby Chennai Silks in T.Nagar and submit a report.
The Division Bench comprising Justice N.Kirubakaran and Justice Krishan Ramasamy, before which the petition from Kannan Balachandran, a resident of in area, came up for hearing, posed the question to the state housing secretary, present in the court.
In a counter filed by the Tamil Nadu fire and rescue service department submitted that when the seven-storied Chennai Silks building, destroyed in a devastating fire mishap in May 2017, there was no sufficient place to fire service vehicles to reach the spot on Usman Road, T Nagar. The bench asked then how the approval was given to the building.
The Bench has observed that when one of the wings of the government itself submitted that how the approval was given for the present construction of multi storied building to Chennai Silks when safety distance was not there. When it was very clearly mentioned in the affidavit that there is no access for fire engines to reach the spot to put out fire how the approval was given.
Additional Advocate General appeared on behalf of CMDA submitted that the CMDA which had given approval on June 22, 2018, after obtaining NOC from all other departments and in its approval letter clearly mentioned without getting approval from corporation of Chennai construction should not be carried out.
Counsel for petitioner T. Mohan submitted that the multi-storied building committee in its report said that T. Nagar is a congested area and particularly on Ranganathan Street and Usman Road there are 142 deviated buildings are there and no action has been taken till date.
Only 2,500 cars could be parked in a place adjacent to a park and all the 142 buildings depend on this place. Stating that the re-classification of this area is bad in law and already T. Nagar area has rampant illegal constructions.
While referring to monopoly of the big textile and jewellary traders the bench said that these people not even left the district headquarters because of which small traders suffered a lot. The bench said that there should be restrictions. Later, the bench posted the matter for further hearing to Tuesday.
