Activists, residents dispute Corporation’s eviction drive

They allege that the civic body did nothing more than place boards at the sites

June 15, 2017 08:38 am | Updated 08:39 am IST - Coimbatore

The reserved site at VVC Nagar, Ward 34, where the Corporation claimed it had removed encroachment.

The reserved site at VVC Nagar, Ward 34, where the Corporation claimed it had removed encroachment.

A few days ago, the civic body in a press release said it had removed encroachments on a reserved site at Marutham Nagar, Vadavalli, to retrieve the land that measured 15.02 cent and was valued at ₹ 1.50 crore.

In the same release, the Corporation had claimed it had evicted encroacher on a reserved site at VVC Nagar, Kalapatti, to take back possession of the land that measured 18 cents and was valued at ₹1.44 crore.

Activists and area residents have now disputed the eviction exercise, alleging that the civic body did nothing more than place boards at the sites.

They have also sought to question the Corporation’s claim that since November 2016 it had retrieved reserved sites measuring over 25 acre, valued at over ₹268.68 crore.

Countering the Corporation’s claim, S. Kuppusamy, a resident of Vadavalli, said the land the Corporation claimed to have retrieved was not encroached.

Children of the area were using it as a playground. What the Corporation did was just erect the board.

The Corporation’s list of reserved sites, available online, only seemed to confirm to his allegation, for it states that the site measuring 397.3, classified as land reserved for park, is vacant.

The VVC Nagar instance was no different, said S.P. Thiyagarajan, convener, Tamil Nadu Reserved Sites Protection Committee. Pointing to the site where the Corporation had erected a board claiming ownership after the eviction drive, he said there was nothing to be evicted.

The hay stack that was there before Saturday remained.

Corporation officials said they had removed a cattle shed to take possession of the land.

Ironically, here too, the Corporation website states that the reserved site measuring 21 cents remains an open space.

Mr. Thiyagarajan said the two were only the tip of the iceberg as in many instances, Town Planning section officials only erected boards to wrongly claim encroachment eviction drives. “The truth is that the Corporation officials are ignoring sites that are actually encroached.”

To buttress his argument, he cited the reply the Corporation sent him to his query under the Right to Information Act: the Corporation in its response dated May 26, 2017 had said it did not have record of the name of the encroacher, his or her address, extent encroached, photographs of encroachment and notice sent to the encroacher.

“The eviction drives were based on field inspection of assistant town planning officers in the five zones. Therefore, no record was available.”

In cases where it had identified the encroacher and measured the extent of encroachment, the Corporation had done nothing, he said citing a second RTI reply. The civic body had said it had not issued notices to encroachers of the 144 reserved sites since July 2016.

Denying allegations that the Corporation did not issue notices to encroachers, Corporation Commissioner K. Vijayakarthikeyan said removing encroachments was a continuous process that the civic body religiously pursued. “The Corporation will continue to bring all reserved sites in to its purview both on paper and ground and do it effectively.”

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