The State government on Thursday told the Madras High Court that it’s policy is to ensure peaceful and not forceful eviction of long-time encroachers of waterbodies and other government poromboke land. It said that those who had been occupying encroached properties for decades together would be evicted after providing a suitable alternative accommodation.
Appearing before the first Division Bench of Acting Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy, Additional Advocate General J. Ravindran said the government was not in favour of evicting the encroachers forcibly overnight. Suitable alternative site would be identified and then the encroachers would be shifted smoothly.
The submission was made during the hearing of a 2019 writ petition by Ramapuram Social Welfare Federation seeking a direction to the Chennai Collector, District Revenue Officer and Maduravoyal Taluk Tahsildar to restore the Ramapuram Lake as it was in 1987 after evicting all the subsequent encroachments and restoring the natural water canals.
Filing a status report before the court, the Tahsildar said the Ramapuram village was originally spread over 10.87 hectares (equivalent to 26.86 acres) of which 2.08 hectares was subdivided and classified as Grama Natham. The rest of the 8.79 hectares stood registered as Ramapuram Lake. However, out of this, an extent of 1.66 hectares was alienated to Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board (now Tamil Nadu Urban Habitat Development Board) in 2003.
The remaining extent continues to remain classified as a lake in the revenue records though in reality only 0.85 hectares was being used as a lake and the rest was either under encroachment or had been used to lay metal roads. Stating that there were about 700 encroachments on the lake, the Tahsildar said the Highways Department had evicted about 24 encroachers in 2018.
Stating that the waterbody was now under the maintenance of the Greater Chennai Corporation, the Tahsildar said the encroachments would be removed in a phased manner after the local bodIes election and after ensuring biometric enumeration.
