Chennai: The Madras high court has ordered notice to the state government on a Public Interest Litigation, which sought a direction to the authorities to assess the damages caused to the properties, crops, coconut trees and the livestock of the people in all the villages in the Delta districts due to “Gaja” cyclone and grant suitable compensation to them.
A division bench comprising Justices M.Sathyanarayanan and N.Seshasayee, before whom the PIL filed by advocate M.Vellaisamy came up for hearing, clubbed the PIL with other similar petitions and posted to November 29 further hearing of the case.
According to petitioner, on November 16 and 17 the Gaja cyclone hit the areas of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry and all the villages in Nagapattinam, Thiruvarur, Thanjavur and Pudukottai districts came to be affected. The main damage caused was with respect to the coconut trees, crops and the houses of the
villagers and all the trees which were being livelihood of the entire village in those districts were totally uprooted to earth.
The cyclone caused damage to properties and uprooted trees in the entire four districts were not yet been assessed till date. As many as 43 villages in Pudukottai district, 87 villages in Nagapattinam district, 53 villages in Vedaranyam district and 47 villages in Thiruvarur, which were all small districts, have not been visited and the damages caused to the people and the trees and livestock has not been assessed till date, he added and sought an interim direction to immediately distribute the relief materials in the four districts.
