MADURAI
The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court, while hearing a public interest litigation petition that sought a direction for completion of Deraparai dam in Madurai, on Thursday asked the State to file a report on the number of check dams built in Tamil Nadu.
A Division Bench of Justices N. Kirubakaran and S.S. Sundar observed that the State was affected by shortage of rainfall. Also, being a lower riparian State, it was the duty of the government to preserve available water rather than letting it into the sea. But no effective steps were taken by the State to construct check dams to preserve water, the court said.
Political leaders were only raising objections to construction of check dams by other States without considering any such dams for Tamil Nadu. The neighbouring States had constructed check dams and were draining the excess water into Tamil Nadu. To put it otherwise, Tamil Nadu was treated as a drainage by other States, the court said.
The court put forth a set of queries for the State to answer. They included questions on number of rivers flowing in Tamil Nadu and the number of perennial rivers among them.
The court asked the State whether it had proposed to construct check dams on rivers. It wanted to know if there was a proposal to connect the rivers and if encroachments on them were removed. The State was asked to file the response by March 14, the next date of hearing.