Madras HC orders Nilgiris admin to tear down illegal construction

Chennai:

Madras High Court has given two weeks deadline to tear down illegal construction in Ooty after hearing a contempt petition filed by Nilgiris Ecological and Animal Protection Samiti.

The first bench comprising of acting chief justice Satish K Agnihotri and Justice M M Sundaresh ordered the district administration to comply within two weeks after hearing the contempt petition.

Interestingly, this comes after Archana Patnaik, presently Collector, Coimbatore district, was directed by the Madras High Court to appear before it on October 29 in connection with contempt proceedings for failing to restrain S N Devaraj of Essenn Lodge, Charing Cross, Udagamandalam, from putting up any construction in Doddapetta panchayat.

The first court of Justice R K Agrawal and Justice M Sathyanarayanan, had on December 16, 2011, directed the then Nilgiris District Collector Archana Patnaik to make a spot inspection of the construction and stop it if illegal. As she did not take any action, B Kannabiran, president of the Nilgiris Ecological and Animal Protection Samiti, Pykara filed a contempt petition.

In her affidavit before the court, Patnaik said that she had personally appeared in the court as directed by it and to inform it about the current stage of appeal petition filed by N Devarajan before the government.

She said Devarajan and four others were given seven days time to demolish the unauthorized portions on 22, October 2013. But before that they preferred a petition before the government in Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Department and issued a notice to the Nilgiris collector to stop the demolition process until final orders are passed by the government. However the petition was rejected by the government.

Patnaik said the government passed the order to demolish it  but since the stability of the landscape is not strong and as per the suggestions of technical committee’s report the area is susceptible to landslides. As such operating heavy machineries like JCB, pocline machine to demolish deviated portions is not possible as such they have to be removed using labour and debris carefully loaded and dumped.

She said a committee has been formed which measured five buildings and marked out the deviations. She urged the court to issue necessary directions to the present collector of Nilgiris district to proceed further in accordance with law by granting appropriate time frame and pass the orders.