When S. Kumararaja settled in Velachery in the 1980s, little did he imagine that the ‘village’ would get transformed into a bustling core of the city. The village, previously called ‘Vedasreni’, became Velachery over a period of time. It was once a famous place for learning religious scriptures. The important temples for Dhandeeswarar and Yoga Narasimhar point to how ancient the locality is. Mr. Kumararaja, an avid social worker, says the civic infrastructure development in the past two decades is so phenomenal that the area has become an Assembly constituency. A resident of the locality for more than 40 years, he recalls that it was a municipality until it merged with the Chennai Corporation, along with Thiruvanmiyur village, to become a separate division in the 1980s.
Fewer than 30,000 residents
Surrounded by agricultural fields, waterbodies, open wells, lakes, and the Pallikaranai marsh, the village was filled with greenery and had fewer than 30,000 residents. Most of the residential localities were scattered with a few houses. The locality comprised Tansi Nagar, Annai Indira Nagar, Baby Nagar, and Vijayanagar, besides the main parts of Velachery that included Brahmin Street and Gandhi Road. When it was a village, it had only two bus services, to Saidapet (route no. 51) and the Ice House bus terminus (45A).
Despite its merger with the Chennai Corporation, Velachery did not have proper roads, underground drainage, and piped drinking water supply until 1995. Yet, people started settling in large numbers here owing to the locality being close to the city and cheap land. The arterial Velachery Main Road became prominent after a bus terminus came up, connecting the area to Tambaram, Broadway, and T. Nagar. The implementation of the Mass Rapid Transit System, the expansion of Velachery Main Road and Taramani Link Road, and the laying of the Bypass Road made it a hot property.
The locality, once a part of the Tambaram constituency, has become a separate constituency, with a Tahsildar office, multi-modal transport, well-linked arterial roads towards the Information Technology Corridor, GST Road, and Anna Salai.
Many unresolved issues
Still, there are many unresolved issues like traffic congestion on all arterial roads. Expansion of the Velachery Main Road from the Sardar Patel Road junction to the Bypass Road junction and encroachments on the Velachery Lake and the Pallikaranai Marsh are the main problems. The encroachments on the lake and the marsh have resulted in the fringe localities suffering from severe floods in times of heavy rain every year.
(As told to R. Srikanth)
