The petitioner sought to take action against the encroachers of odai poramboke
Madras high Court
Chennai: Pulling up the authorities for not answering the representations of the citizens, the Madras high court has made it clear that unless it sees some improvement in this position, it will have no option but to call the chief secretary in person for him to explain as to what steps are being taken for the administrative functioning which appears to be lacking and overloading the judiciary. Disposing of a PIL from Kaliammal of Villupuram district, a division bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice T.S. Sivagnanam, directed the tahsildar to decide the representation of the petitioner within a month after notice to all concerned and file an affidavit before the court explaining the inaction from July 31, 2014.
The petitioner sought to take action against the encroachers of odai poramboke (excess water supply canal) situated at Karadisithur village, Chinna Salem taluk, Villupuram district. In its order, the bench said this was one more case where representations of citizens remain unanswered. “We really fail to appreciate why the message is not percolating down that such representation must be disposed of in a time-bound manner, either accepted or rejected with appropriate orders.
The result is that day after day, we are burdened with petitions of PIL primarily seeking only disposal of the representations. Only when the representation is disposed of would the correctness of the factual matrix emerge and the court would be able to appreciate the controversy. No endeavour is being made despite our repeated directions that such representations are bound to be disposed of
in a time-bound manner,” the bench added.
The bench said in the facts of the present case, it found that the representation of the petitioner dated July 26, 2014 addressed to the Villupuram collector was forwarded by an office memo dated July 31, 2014 to the Tahsildar. Still there has been no response. The tahsildar was directed to decide the representation within a month, the bench added.
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