Citing the recent Supreme Court verdict in the Kerala Maradu flats demolition case, the Madras High Court on Tuesday ordered the demolition of a 16,218 square feet bungalow constructed close to the Bay of Bengal at a stretch known as Olive Island in Muttukadu Taluk situated on the East Coast Road here.
A Bench of Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and R. Hemalatha directed the Kancheepuram Collector as well as the district coastal management zone authority to demolish the bungalow used as a guest house by Rajsriya Automotive Industries Private Limited, and report the progress to the court within two weeks.
The orders were passed after Special Government Pleader E. Manoharan told the court the entire stretch on which about six bungalows had been constructed illegally by different individuals had been declared as a ‘no development zone’ since it was a inter tidal zone falling under Coastal Regulatory Zone (CRZ)-III.
After advocate A. Yogeshwaran, representing a public interest litigation petitioner informed the court that he had filed the case against all six buildings, the judges ordered disconnection of power supply to the other five bungalows apart from snapping their sewage and drinking water connections too.
The court had, on November 28 itself, ordered disconnection of power insofar as the guesthouse owned by the private automotive industry was concerned. Then, it had also recorded an undertaking given by the company’s counsel that it shall remove all boulders that had been placed illegally behind the guesthouse to prevent intrusion of seawater.
However, when the case was taken up for hearing on Tuesday, the counsel sought two more weeks’ time to remove the boulders. Irked over such a submission, the judges ordered that the bungalow constructed on the seafront solely on the basis of a planning permission obtained from the local panchayat should be demolished.
They also ordered that the boulders should be removed by the private company itself and shifted to some other place without dumping it anywhere near the coastal area.
