The Madras High Court has directed the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA), the Greater Chennai Corporation and the Housing and Urban Development Department to take to task officials who regularise violations related to vacant space to be provided around every building as per the approved construction plan.
A Division Bench of Justices S. Vaidyanathan and R. Subramanian ordered that such officials should be transferred to non-sensitive posts.
The direction was issued while disposing of a batch of three writ petitions related to buildings that had been constructed on the entire piece of land without providing a setback area around them.
Authoring the judgment, Mr. Justice Vaidyanathan recalled that the High Court in a catena of decisions rendered in the past had categorically held that non-curable violations related to the setback area could not be regularised by the officials concerned. Hence, he ordered that all such regularisations done so far would have to be recalled.
The Division Bench also made it clear that, henceforth, the government officials should not regularise violations related to either setback area in individual buildings or Open space Reservation (OSR) land that must be allotted mandatorily for common purposes while constructing buildings on huge pieces of land.