Criticising the inordinate delay in acquiring lands for building service lanes along the city stretch of the Tiruchi-Thanjavur Highway, the Federation for Retrieval of Tiruchi-Palpannai-Thuvakudi Service Roads, comprising a clutch of residents welfare associations, has urged the State and Central government to ensure that there was no slackness in implementing the project.
Despite repeated assurances from officials and elected representatives, the service roads have not materialised as the land acquisition process is yet to be completed. Frustrated over the delay, the federation has now started a fresh-round of petitioning and has even sent its pliant to the President and the Prime Minister recently.
“We had represented the issue to the local MLA and School Education Minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi, and Tiruchi MP Su.Thirunavukkarasar. We have also sent a representation to Chief Minister M.K.Stalin but are not sure whether it went to his notice,” said the organisers of the federation, S. Subramaniyan, S.Sakthivel, M.Shanmugam and A.Natarajan, addressing a press conference here on Monday.
They pointed out that the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court had, in October 2019, directed the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to take expeditious steps to build service lanes along the 14.5-km city stretch of the highway between Thuvakudi and Palpannai in Tiruchi. The court had hoped that the service road would be formed within six months. But till date, the land acquisition process has not been completed, they regretted and blamed the officials concerned for the delay.
Valuation of the properties for fixing the compensation for the land that are to be acquired is yet to be completed, the federation said and accused the Project Director, NHAI, Thanjavur, and the Special District Revenue Officer (Land Acquisition), of delaying the process deliberately.
“The District Collector has the responsibility to coordinate and expedite the process. When we met him in July 2021,he assured that the land will be acquired and handed over to the National Highways Authority of India, by December. But the process is yet to be completed and this amounted contempt of court,” they said.
The federation also criticised the recent suggestion put forth by Minister for Public Works Department and Highways, E. V. Velu, to the Centre to build an elevated highway on the stretch instead of the service lanes. This is nothing but an attempt to stall the service lane project and it blatantly favoured the traders, who had been opposing the land acquisition right since 2006, the federation charged.
Already the width of the service lane has been reduced from the standard 60 metres to 45 metres as per an order of the state government and the High Court had also approved it. Most property owners on the stretch were leaving out the space when constructing new buildings. But some buildings were being constructed on the notified land which are to be acquired and the Corporation was turning a blind eye to this, they complained.
“It is highly regrettable that those in power are repeatedly favouring the traders without taking into account the loss of lives due to accidents taking place on the stretch in the absence of service lanes,” the federation organisers said.