No law deters authorities in HC from felling trees on campus
A Subramani
Chennai:
Many trees on the Madras high court campus are being cut down in a treechopping drive that started last week.
“In the name of pruning, they have denuded many trees of their entire foliage,“ said Madras High Court Advocates Association president R C Paul Kanagaraj, adding that the authorities should have removed only those branches that caused trouble to the buildings. “Here, they have chopped the tree trunks from the middle,“ he said.
Trees in the vicinity of the Indian Bank building and the new law officers' chambers are worst-affected.
“Born in rural agrarian families, we know how precious plants are,“ said advocate Siva Rajasekaran. “Chopping down big trees is a mindless act.“
Senior advocate Vijay Narayan, who now occupies the chamber once held by legendary Nambiar and K K Venugopal, also wondered whose idea it was to chop them. His chambers used to enjoy shade from the foliage of two huge trees. While one is left with one branch, the other is just a butchered trunk . “You should ask the high court authorities why they did that,“ he said.
A registrar told TOI the lopping of the trees was ordered by the heritage committee, which acted on expert advice that any branch touching the heritage building must be cut.
The southern bench of National Green Tri bunal has issued notice to au thorities on a petition seek ing directions to remove a methane gas project on the Potheri Lake bed. N Krish nan, a resident of Zameen Royapettah, said because of the encroachments, the lake had shrunk to 5 acres from 9 acres. The water body now appears like a sewage pond.
Pallavaram municipality had encroached the south ern portion of the lake and erected a sand bed in the mid dle of the lake to construct a building for the gas project This violated a government order prohibiting construc tion near water bodies.
Krishnan sent a repre sentation to the authorities concerned to remove en croachment and stop con struction on the lakebed When there was no response he moved the Madras high court which, in its order in January 2015, directed the revenue authorities to dis pose of his petition. Howev er, the Pallavaram munici pality commissioner went ahead with the illegal con struction, Krishnan said.
He filed a case in a munsif court at Alandur to restrain the municipality from going ahead with the construction With the case pending, the municipality planned to open the biogas project.
On Monday , a bench com prising judicial member Jus tice M Chockalingam and ex pert member P S Rao issued notices to the commissioner of the municipality , the CMDA secretary and TNPCB chairman.
