Pass orders on Towers Club plea, HC tells government

The Madras High Court on Monday directed the State government to pass orders within a week on a representation made by the Towers Club in Anna Nagar, for extending by 99 years the lease granted in its favour with respect to 31,992 square feet of vacant land belonging to Greater Chennai Corporation as well an auditorium building spread over 5,872 square feet.

Passing interim orders on a writ appeal preferred by the club against a single judge’s order giving a go ahead to the Corporation to vacate the club, a Division Bench of Justices N. Kirubakaran and P. Velmurugan directed the government to consider the appellant’s representation, made in 2013, without being influenced by the single judge’s order.

The direction was issued after senior counsel P.S. Raman and advocate V. Raghavachari, representing the club, brought it to the notice of the Bench that it had filed a writ petition in 2014 seeking a direction to the government to consider its representation. However, the single judge disposed of the petition last month even before such consideration.

“The government had not passed any written order either accepting or rejecting our request. Yet, the single judge dismissed the writ petition by simply recording the statement of a government counsel that there is no intention to extend the lease. Unless there is a written order, how could an oral statement by a law officer can be taken into account,” Mr. Raman argued.

Finding force in his submissions, the Bench insisted that the government should pass some orders on the representation. Additional Advocate General Narmadha Sampath sought a week for producing a written order on the consideration of the club’s representation.

During the course of hearing, Justice Kirubakaran initially came down heavily on a former Corporation Commissioner, who in 1989, decided to lease out the public property to the club. “Who is he to lease out the public property to a private club. Is he still in service?” the judge asked the AAG.

He also directed her to submit the list of all private clubs occupying prime public properties in Chennai while paying a pittance to the government despite collecting lakhs as membership feeThe AAG also agreed to submit the list during the next hearing of the case.

However, Mr. Raghavachari told the judge that a majority of the members of Towers Club in Anna Nagar were teetotallers and that most of them were also vegetarians. They use the club only for playing games and to congregate.