On the direction of the Madras High Court, District Collector V. Sampath has issued strict instructions to the officials to immediately evict those families encroaching upon the lake situated on the Ginjee — Thiruvannamalai Road.
Addressing an official meeting here on Wednesday the Collector said that in all there were 259 families that had settled down on the lake bed and on the banks of the water body for a long time.
However, after the High Court pronouncement as many as 94 families had obtained a stay order on their vacation.
Therefore, leaving those families the officials ought to vacate others who were un-authorisedly encroaching upon the water body.
The Collector told them that if they refused to do so the electricity and water supply connections to their tenements should be cut.
But the stern action taken by the officials even in the presence of police force triggered protest from the encroachers.
When Rathinavelu, an employee of the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation, attempted to snap the electricity connection to one of the houses there on Wednesday morning the irate residents caught hold of him and locked him up in a house.
Later, they trooped to the Ginjee taluk office with the intention to stay on the campus to register their protest. They stayed there even till late in the evening, regardless of the persuasion of all the officials and the police to disperse.