Hours before the State government on August 7 expressed its inability to allot space next to the Anna memorial at the Marina beach in Chennai for burying the body of DMK patriarch and former Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, advocate V. Gandhimathi, 48, had withdrawn a public interest litigation (PIL) petition filed by her last week to prevent Greater Chennai Corporation from granting permission for disposal of dead bodies on the coastal area.
The PIL was actually listed for admission on August 3 before the first Division Bench of the then Chief Justice Indira Banerjee (now a Supreme Court judge) and Justice P.T. Asha. However, since the Bench did not sit on that day, the case got listed on the same day before a Division Bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh and N. Anand Venkatesh who simply adjourned the matter to August 6 without passing any order.
However, the Registry did not list the matter before the first Division Bench on August 6 since it was the last day in office for Justice Banerjee who chose to deliver only judgements that had already been reserved by her. She did not take up any new case for admission. On August 7, the PIL was listed as the 17th case of the day before Acting Chief Justice Huluvadi G. Ramesh and Justice S.S. Sundar.
Even before the case could reach, the petitioner’s counsel mentioned the matter before the Bench led by the Acting Chief Justice and sought the permission of the court to withdraw the case. Accepting the plea, the Bench dismissed the PIL petition as withdrawn. In her affidavit, the petitioner had contended that disposal of dead bodies in public places such as the Marina beach would cause “public nuisance and disturbance”.
She had sought for a direction to Greater Chennai Corporation to formulate guidelines to be followed while granting licence under Section 319 of the Chennai City Municipal Corporation Act of 1919 for places to be used for disposing the dead and make sure that those guidelines prevent disposal of dead bodies on the Marina. She had also insisted on an interim order to prevent disposal of the dead on the marina until such guidelines were formulated.
Other cases
Apart from this case, which was withdrawn, a batch of PILs filed by activist ‘Traffic’ K.R. Ramaswamy, advocate S. Doraisamy and C. Kumaran of Thanthai Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam against the burial of former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, next to AIADMK patriarch M.G. Ramachandran’s burial place, on the Marina beach are pending adjudication in the court. In these cases, the petitioners had questioned burial of a body in alleged violation of Coastal Regulatory Zone norms.
In his petition, Mr. Ramaswamy had gone a step further and sought for a direction to shift the mausoleums of former Chief Ministers C.N. Annadurai, MGR as well as Jayalalithaa from the Marina beach to anywhere near the Gandhi Mandapam at Guindy in Chennai. However, the State government opposed his plea tooth and nail by filing a counter affidavit through Tamil Development and Information Secretary R. Venkatesan in January 2018.
The government had contended that the CRZ norms would not be applicable to the mausoleums of Annadurai and MGR since they were built before the regulations came into force in 1991. In so far as Jayalalithaa’s proposed mausoleum was concerned, the Secretary contended that construction of a mausoleum was not a prohibited activity in areas classified as CRZ.
As per a notification issued by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests on February 17, 2015, memorials could be built even in inter-tidal zones classified as CRZ-IVA if such construction was carried out based on scientific studies, he said.
Pointing out that the place where Jayalalithaa’s body had been laid to rest was classified only as CRZ-II, Mr. Venkatesan said the regulations applicable to such a zone permit construction of buildings on the landward side of an existing road or authorised structure. The burial site of Jayalalithaa falls within the existing structure of the memorial of MGR, the officer said.
He added that Greater Chennai Corporation was competent to grant permission for construction of small buildings in areas classified as CRZ-II. A decision was taken to build a mausoleum for Jayalalithaa at the Marina since she had introduced various schemes for the development of the poor and the oppressed.
“The State government takes a conscious decision, with regard to establishment of memorials, taking into consideration the importance of the leaders whose contributions had uplifted the society,” the counter-affidavit added.
