CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has ordered the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation (Tangedco) to remove all the debris dumped on the riverbed of Kosasthalaiyar in two weeks. The court said the power entity, one of the arms of the State government, has encroached into the waterbody.
“There is no dispute that Tangedco, which is an extension of the State government, encroached into a water body and orders of court required such encroachment to be removed,” the first bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice PD Audikesavalu said on Friday.
Directing Tangedco to expeditiously remove all foreign material from the riverbed and obtain a certificate from the local PWD engineer to the effect that not even a trace of it is left in the waterbody, the bench asked the PWD engineer to seek the help of Water Resources Engineering department of the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, for conducting a study on whether all offending material was removed. It directed Tangedco to complete the exercise in two weeks, before the matter comes up again before the court.
The court passed an order on October 22 directing the power utility to remove all the trash dumped on the Kosasthalaiyar riverbed. A status report was filed and time was sought till the end of October. However, Tangedco submitted later that it does not have the technology to remove RCC pipes that had been constructed deep inside the waterbody.