The Chennai Corporation is planning to remove illegal structures on the Marina Loop Road and this may lead to eviction and resettlement of fisherfolk’s households.
After an inspection by officials on Friday, enumeration of the encroachments on the 2.5-metre-long road will be made shortly. “A number of them have been identified. We will start biometric enumeration of the households. The work on such portions of the road will be taken up only after resettlement and rehabilitation,” said an official.
The fate of these people is now in question.
The Tamil Nadu Coastal Zone Management Authority has given conditional permission for the Marina beautification project, restricting the drive to an 18.2-metre-wide strip of land from the Lighthouse to Foreshore Estate.
The Authority has not permitted the Corporation to implement the project on the sandy portion of the beach. The existing road is narrow where the fishing settlements abut the tar track from Foreshore Estate to the Lighthouse. The civic body will have to remove encroachments on the non-beach side of the Marina Loop Road. “We have NoC from the Authority. Now, we want a workable solution. A number of households have come up beyond the old village boundary. The Revenue Department will earmark the boundary to identify the exact number of encroachments on the western side,” said an official of the Chennai Corporation.
The Chennai Corporation will start implementing the project in phases along the stretch without any encroachments.
But environmental activists continue to be concerned about the impact of the project. “We do not have a copy of the project report. If we feel it is problematic we will take it to court. The proposal to have a stormwater drain into the Adyar estuary, for instance, seems to be a significant alteration of watersheds. You cannot alter the watershed in CRZ areas. That has a lot of ramifications,” said activist Nityanand Jayaraman.
