The Madras High Court on Wednesday dispensed with the personal appearance of Chief Secretary V. Irai Anbu before the court on Thursday, after he submitted a compact disc containing the details of water bodies in all 313 taluks in the State along with their names, survey numbers and extent.
Acting Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice P.D. Audikesavalu allowed a petition filed for dispensing with his appearance after Advocate General R. Shunmugasundaram submitted the CD containing the details of water bodies and said they were available on the Tamil Nilam website too.
The A-G said the details run to around 20,000 pages and hence were submitted in a CD. He urged the court to reconsider its December 8 order summoning the Chief Secretary in order to seek an explanation for not having submitted the details regarding the water bodies spread across the State.
The court was told that the dealy in filing the details was due to bonafide reasons since they had to be collated from all districts. Further, the government had identified the encroachments too and had decided to evict all the encroachers in a phased manner in order to restore the water bodies to their original position.
Mr. Anbu also told that the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) had in its report, for the year ending in March 2017, highlighted certain shortcomings in the implementation of the Tamil Nadu Protection of Tanks and Eviction of Encroachments Act of 2007. He said the government had now filed an action taken report on the issue.
After taking note of the submissions made by the Chief Secretary, the judges decided to hear on Thursday a huge batch of cases pending in the court complaining about encroachments in various water bodies in different districts and pass appropriate orders for protecting and preserving them.
