The Madras High Court on Thursday directed Tiruvallur Collector and Ponnamallee Tahsildar to restrain an individual who had dug up borewells on a vacant land at Kattupakkam and was selling groundwater to private lorries at a cost of ₹1,000 per lorry.

Justices S. Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad issued the interim direction pursuant to a public interest litigation petition filed by a local resident V. Sheela Devi accusing the landowner Devaraj of not having obtained any permission for commercial exploitation of water.

In her affidavit, the petitioner stated that she has been residing in Selliyamman Street at Goburasanalur in Kattupakkam since 1987. There were about 50 families residing in that locality and all of them were dependant upon the groundwater for their daily needs.

While so many apartments had cropped up around their locality in the recent years, most residents of these apartments had begun to purchase water from private water suppliers because most of their wells had either dried up or was not supplying enough water.

Such water scarcity had made greedy individuals dig borewells in their vacant landswithout obtaining any permission from the government authorities concerned, she alleged.

Single judge’s order

The petitioner also pointed out that Justice S.M. Subramaniam of the High Court had on October 3 issued a series of directions to the government officials to prevent illegal drawal of groundwater from the suburbs of Chennai.

He had directed all Collectors across the State to constitute monitoring committees and to book cases under Section 379 (theft) of the IPC against those who were doing it illegally.

The Division Bench led by Justice Manikumar directed the Tiruvallur Collector to act against illegal drawal of groundwater.