Chennai: The Madras High Court on Tuesday condemned the practice of allowing an encroacher to file an appeal to maintain an illegal construction under Section 113-C of the TN Town and Country Planning Act.
A division bench of Justices M. Venugopal and S. Vaidyanathan made the observation while disposing of a contempt application and a writ petition.
The matter related to the construction of a building in Vilinjambakkam village, Avadi. While one J. Jothi filed a writ petition to regularise his building under Section 113-C, one C. Prabakaran sought to punish the housing and urban development secretary and member-secretary, CMDA, and Avadi municipality commissioner for not implementing an order dated March 23, 2016, against the building.
The bench said that on the basis of this section, the state government had passed two GOs on June 22, 2017, giving exemption in respect of the development of certain buildings.
The government had issued 62 GOs based on the insertion of Section 113-A between July 1, 1987 and January 29, 1988, granting exemption to a large number of buildings in total disregard to and in contravention of the provisions of the Act. All the 62 orders had been set aside by the Supreme Court.
The bench said the insertion of Section 113-C and the subsequent GOs appeared to be helping only the encroachers, who, at a later point of time, would daringly say that though they had encroached on the land, park, Odai, OSR, etc., they were entitled for regularisation.
The insertion of Section 113-C was violative of the decision of the apex court and on that score the two GOs had to be struck down, in view of the fact that they were completely in violation of the decision of the apex court., which had considered the grant of regularisation as a one-time measure.
The government seemed to be encouraging illegal encroachments and unauthorised constructions, the Report No. 8 of 2017 of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India would reveal that the Corporation of Chennai was solely responsible for such encroachments in all places, the bench pointed out.
