Plea against Chennai Silks’ new building dismissed

The Madras High Court on Wednesday dismissed a couple of public interest litigation petitions filed against construction of an eight storey building by Chennai Silks at the same location in Usman Road at T. Nagar here where the textile showroom’s previous building had got gutted in fire on May 31 last year.

A Division Bench of Justices N. Kirubakaran and S. Baskaran rejected the cases after finding Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) to have granted approval for the construction in accordance with law after taking into consideration all factors such as the road width and free ingress and egress to the building.

Kannan Balachandran, a resident of T.Nagar had filed the two PIL petitions. In one of the cases, he had challenged reclassifiation of a portion of the land that falls in Pinjala Subramanian Street into a commercial zone without calling for objections from local residents who would get affected due to increase in vehicular traffic.

However, after going through the records, the judges agreed with senior counsel Mohan Parasaran and N. Senthil Kumar, representing the textile showroom, that a newspaper publication had been made in 2016 itself for reclassification of the property but none of the residents of the locality had raised any objection.

Hence, after completing other formalities, the property was reclassified on April 18 this year. The judges also recorded the submission that the entry to the textile showroom would be only through Usman Road and that the access to it from Pinjala Subramanian Street and Venkatesan Street would be used only for exit.

The new building was being constructed with two levels of basement for providing sufficient vehicle parking facilities. Further, the judges took note that photographs shot during the fire accident that took place last year showed that there was sufficient space on Usman Road to manoeuvre fire tenders and use them in case of emergency.