Madras high court has expressed hope that goverment will make slum free city by 2023
Chennai: The Madras high court has expressed hope that the state government would make all endeavour towards their objective to have a slum-free city with rehabilitation by 2023.
Disposing of a public interest litigation from A. Narayanan, a division bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M. Sathyanarayanan, said, “The material shows that the government is alive to the need of rehabilitation of slum-dwellers through long-term scheme. The averment shows that their aim is to have a slum-free city with rehabilitation by 2023.
We would expect the government to make all endeavours towards this objective and ensure proper maintenance of the rehabilitated areas with adequate facilities, if they do not already exist. We do feel that the continuous maintenance of the area is an important part as otherwise there is deterioration in the construction”.The bench said education and employment facilities in nearby areas were also necessary as it was noticed in different parts of the country that the people hand over/sell the tenements to come back to original locations for their bread and butter.
If there were certain thought processes within the government enriched by experience of rehabilitation as has been pointed out by the counsel for the petitioner, they would certainly form material for on-going future rehabilitation, the bench added.
The bench said the petitioner claiming to be a social activist filed the PIL for rehabilitation of slum-dwellers. There was a TN slum clearance board under the TN housing and urban development department and it was not in dispute that the resettlement and rehabilitation schemes have been implemented and were being implemented. In the view of the petitioner, the scheme was not planned as he wanted them to be. “However, this is a matter purely within the policy domain where the elected government would decide the mode and manner of resettlement and not any individual activist,” the bench added.
The bench said the petitioner in a nutshell would prefer a more in situ development process of rehabilitation whether the encroachers/slum-dwellers were rehabilitated in the same area rather than in a different area. “This, in our view, is once again a matter of policy issue as both methods are known and whether one is preferred over the other in a given situation is for the authorities to decide. This would also, in turn, depend on whether alternative land is available for purposes of such rehabilitation,” the bench added.
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