The Madras High Court had on January 19 this year asked the Coimbatore district administration, Coimbatore Corporation and the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board to remove within six months the encroachments in Jeeva Nagar, Kavundampalayam.
The deadline given by the then Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M. Sundar would expire by July 19, three days away. But the officials seemed to have done very little in this regard.
The court had delivered its judgement in writ petitions filed by the K.K. Pudur Residents Welfare Association and the Nagammal Street Residents Welfare Association that had sought a direction to the authorities to evict the occupants of the 121 houses in Jeeva Nagar, who by building houses had reduced from 70 feet to 15 feet the width of the one-km-long road that connects Mettupalayam Road with Thadagam Road.
It said that though there was no dispute among the parties to the case that the residents had indeed encroached upon the road space, it would not accept the arguments of the district administration, Coimbatore Corporation and the Board that the people had moved into the area a few years before the petitioner-association members had built houses.
The court also found fault with the district administration’s approach to the issue and dismissed the argument that the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board had notified the area for slum development and had spent a few lakh rupees.
But now with the deadline a few days away, the petitioner associations complained that none of the authorities, cited as respondents, had complied with the order.
They would move the court for contempt, said K.K.M. Shelvaraju, president of the K.K. Pudur association.
List sent for approval
Sources said that the Coimbatore Corporation had completed capturing the biometric details of the occupants to be evicted and shared the details with the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board for action.
The Board officials confirmed the receipt of the Corporation’s list and said that they had sent it to their head office for approval.
Once the head office granted the approval, the Board along with the civic body and district administration would relocate the people to its tenements in Keeranatham and thereafter demolish their houses in Jeeva Nagar.
