Chennai: The Madras high court criticised advocates “who behaved like musclemen” and attempted to prevent corporation officials from locating a community well which was covered and a commercial complex allegedly constructed by an individual in Tiruvallur district. Passing further interim orders on a public interest litigation from the Vaname Ellai Podhu Nala Sangam by its president M. Devendiran, a division bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M. Sathyanarayanan, said the encroacher had obtained interim orders without disclosing the fact that this bench was already seized of the matter.
According to the petitioner, there was an open well on Pillayar Koil street in Puzhal village. After expansion of corporation limits and Puzhal town panchayat got merged with the Chennai city corporation, the open well was encroached upon by M. Thiyagarajan. Without any proper approval and rights, Thiyagarajan constructed a multi-storeyed building, covering the open well. The petitioner gave representations to various authorities, but when there was no response, he approached the high court and sought a direction to the authorities to take immediate steps to safeguard and restore the open well.
The bench had, on November 22, directed the authorities to restore the public well and take action against the officer who facilitated the destruction for the sake of building construction. The bench had posted the matter to December 23 for compliance. When the matter came up for hearing on Tuesday, the bench pointed out that though the matter was pending before it, encroacher Thiyagarajan’s brother had initiated parallel proceedings before another judge and obtained an order of status quo on December 17 by suppressing the material facts.
“Another disturbing aspect is that some members of the legal fraternity appear to have acted as musclemen for Thiyagarajan by seeking to obstruct corporation officials in performing their duty, which they were finally able to do only with police officials,” the bench added.
The bench was also informed that disciplinary proceedings had been initiated against an assistant engineer. Referring to the statement of the officials that they could not locate the exact position of the well, the bench said, “In our view, there was sufficient time to have found out the exact position. We thus direct the zonal officer-III to remain personally present in court to explain to us the stand of the corporation.” The bench posted to January 23, 2015, further hearing of the case.
