The Madras High Court on Friday put the State government in a fix by tagging two public interest litigation petitions filed against acquisition of wetlands for the proposed ₹10,000 crore Salem-Chennai expressway with a couple of writ appeals filed by the government in 2014 refusing to part with lands, classified as water bodies, for improving the Tiruchi-Pudukottai-Karaikudi section of National Highway (NH)-210.
A Division Bench of Justices K.K. Sasidharan and R. Subramanian passed the interim order when the PIL petition filed by advocate A.P. Suryaprakasam, 65, came up for admission. The lawyer had sought a direction to the Centre as well as State government to constitute a committee of experts to study the ecological damage that result on account of indiscriminate land acquisition for the proposed expressway.
Arguing his case in person, he wondered how the governments could go ahead with acquisition of lands for such a massive project without even holding discussions with stakeholders.
Threat to water bodies
He also claimed that several water bodies in Kancheepuram, Tiruvannamalai, Tiruvallur and Salem districts would be destroyed on account of the proposed expressway.
Immediately, Justice Sasidharan recalled that the 2014 writ appeals of the State government came up for hearing before his Division Bench on Thursday. In those appeals, the government challenged a direction given to it by a single judge of the court on January 6, 2014 to issue a no-objection certification to the NHAI for improving NH-210 by filling up some of the water bodies.
Assailing the single judge’s order, the government contended that permitting NHAI to put up constructions close to water bodies would cause ecological imbalance and affect a policy adopted by the appellant to protect water bodies from obliteration. It was also the government’s contention that construction of a highway would obstruct the inflow and outflow to the water bodies.
Since identical issues were involved in the PIL petition filed against the Chennai-Salem expressway and the State’s appeals pending since 2014, the judges felt that they should be heard together.
On being informed that G. Sundarrajan of Poovulagin Nanbargal, a non-governmental organisation, too filed a PIL petition, the judges said that it could also be tagged with the others.
“Let notice to be issued to respondents (Centre and State government) returnable by July 12. We direct the Registry to place the matter before the honourable Chief Justice for passing appropriate orders to post this writ petition along with the other pending writ petition and the intra court appeals,” the Division Bench ordered.
