The Madras High Court on Thursday took suo motu cognisance of abysmal condition of tar roads across the city and sought a response from the Greater Chennai Corporation Commissioner as well as the Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic), since poor maintenance of roads was one of the reasons for motor accidents.
A Bench of Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and N. Seshasayee included the two officials as respondents to a suo motu public interest litigation petition taken up primarily to address the bad condition of National Highway (NH)-4 between Maduravoyal here and Walajahpet falling under the newly carved out Ranipet district.
Letter from judge
Chief Justice Amreshwar Pratap Sahi directed the Registry to take up the suo motu PIL on the basis of a letter written to him by Justice M. Sathyanarayanan on November 22 complaining about the particular stretch of the national highway being maintained in a very poor condition despite collection of toll at regular rates.
Passing interim orders on the petition, the Bench said it appeared that the National Highways Authority of India had failed to fix responsibility on its concessionaire responsible for maintaining that particular stretch and penalise the firm for its omissions. They also said that only patch work appeared to have been done at some places.
When the judges wanted to know when the road was built and relaid between Maduravoyal and Walajahpet, Assistant Solicitor General G. Karthikeyan took time till December 9 to submit details.
Not wanting to confine the case to the road, the judges expanded the scope to include city roads.
They directed Additional Government Pleader E. Manoharan to take notice on behalf of the State Highways department and Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) and submit their response on the date of next hearing.
The court was piqued over potholes, craters and cavity having become a common phenomenon on city roads.
Dig at Corporation
“We can appreciate you (Chennai Corporation) only for one thing. You have not violated Article 14 (right to equality) of the Constitution. You have not discriminated between the poor and the rich when it comes to poor maintenance of roads. All of them, including VVIPs, are travelling only on bad roads,” the senior judge told the corporation counsel sarcastically.
