CHENNAI: A Division bench of the High Court on Monday permitted the Tamil Nadu government to go ahead with the construction of an arch on the Marina to commemorate former Chief Minister and AIADMK founder M G Ramachandran as part of his centenary celebrations. The bench of Justices M Sathyanarayanan and N Seshasayee, however, restrained the government from declaring it open without prior permission from the court and posted the matter to January 21 with a direction to the government to file its counter.
In his PIL petition, advocate D Dinesh Kumar alleged that the government was constructing the MGR centenary arch at a cost of 2.52 crore. It encroached upon the Kamarajar Salai on Marina opposite the PWD headquarters in contravention of the provisions of the Tamil Nadu Highways Act, 2001.
Since the state had already built a memorial for MGR on the Marina much against the coastal regulation rules, no public interest would be served in constructing the arch. The Supreme Court had banned construction of any structure or statue on public roads. The statue for thespian Sivaji Ganesan, erected in the middle of Kamarajar Salai at the junction of Dr Radhakrishnan Salai, which allegedly disrupted the free traffic flow, had been removed after the court’s intervention, he pointed out.
“Any construction on a highway road can be made only for the purpose of its development and not for any other purpose. Constructing an arch for MGR centenary is completely unauthorised. It was being built to cover up the inner party squabbles,” he claimed and wanted the court to interfere by granting an interim injunction restraining the state from proceeding with the plan.
Pointing to the green signal shown by the High Court for the construction of the 60th year celebration of the Assembly on the same road near the War Memorial a couple of years ago, AG Vijay Narayan claimed that there was nothing wrong in putting up a similar structure for the MGR arch.