The Madras High Court has dismissed the Government order of land acquisition and has directed the State Government to restore the lands to the rightful owners.
Chennai:
Even as the multi-crore eight-lane Salem-Chennai green corridor project, turned out to be a major campaign point in the ensuing Lok Sabha elections, the Madras High Court pronounced its verdict on Monday on a batch of writ petitions seeking to stall its implementation.
The division bench comprising Justice TS Sivagnanam and Justice Bhavani Subbaroyan, which passed an interim order directing the Government to abstain from dispossessing the farmers of their lands following a string of complaints regarding harassment from police and revenue officials, had reserved its orders on December 14, 2018.
The bench in its interim order had held, “The respondents are directed not to dispossess the respective landowners from the land in question, which they propose to acquire until further orders in these writ petitions.”
The ambitious 277.3 km long eight-lane greenfield project connecting Salem and Chennai under the Centre’s ‘Bharatmala Pariyojana’ scheme aims to cut travel time between the two cities by half to about two hours and 15 minutes. But the hurried manner in which the alignment was worked out requiring vast tracts of farm lands and forest lands had created a lot of protests and stiff opposition from locals, including farmers over fears of losing their land, besides environmentalists who opposed felling of trees for the project.
However, even as the hearing in the case was in progress, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways had issued a fresh set of notifications to initiate land acquisition of 1,125 acres of land spread out in Salem, Dharmapuri, Tiruvannamalai and Kancheepuram districts for the project. It was contended that the alignment was changed to avoid it passing through the Theethamalai Reserve Forest and instead go through the outskirts of the forest.
The counter filed by the project implementation unit of the National Highways Authority Government had stated that owing to the realignment the required area of the lands had come down and had averted demolition of several houses in various villages.
Meanwhile in the much awaited Chennai-Salem express highway verdict, the Madras High Court has squashed State Government land acquisition plea on Monday.
The Madras High Court has also directed the State Government to restore the lands to the rightful owners. It was also stated that all the measures taken by the Government with respect to the proposed expressway has to be revoked with immediate effect.
Advocate Kanakaraj, addressed the press said that the High Court has banned the Highway proposal and that any further proposals has to initiated after 2 years of ground work. The lands that were acquired has to be re-registered to the rightful owners within 8 weeks.