The Madras High Court on Wednesday directed Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) to upload on its website, a map of the realigned route, finalised between Madhavaram Milk colony and Murari Hospital, after it the earlier plan to take a circuitous route to establish the Thapalpetti metro station was discarded. CMRL was ordered to upload the revised map within 24 hours. Justices Anita Sumanth and M. Nirmal Kumar also called for a compliance report in this regard by Thursday.
The interim orders were passed on a public interest litigation petition filed by local resident I. Lourdu Raj who insisted on the construction of the Thapalpetti metro station as per the original Detailed Project Report (DPR), since CMRL had already acquired the land required for this construction.
The petitioner’s counsel said, the distance between any two metro stations, that had already been constructed by CMRL in phase I of its project and even those under currently construction in phase II, was only between 700 to 900 metres, whereas the distance between Madhavaram Milk Colony and Murari Hospital alone had increased to 1.7 km due to the scrapping of the Thapalpetti station.
However, on finding that the petitioner had based his arguments by relying upon a 2018 alignment map, the judges wanted to know whether CMRL had undertaken any changes. In reply, Advocate General R. Shunmugasundram produced a revised map under which the entire route had been realigned between the two stations without touching Thapalpetti.
Further, under the new alignment, the distance between Madhavaram Milk Colony and Murari Hospital was only 896.377 metres, he said. After perusing the map, the judges told the petitioner’s counsel that the court could not direct CMRL to establish a metro station at a particular place since it was a policy decision to be taken after considering several factors.
However, it was incumbent upon CMRL to make public the changes to be undertaken in the alignment and the least that was expected of the organisation, was to upload the revised maps on its website. To that extent, the court could issue directions, Justice Sumanth said, and ordered that the map related to the present case be uploaded within 24 hours.
