CHENNAI: Censuring Southern Railway for allegedly constructing a subway in Nagapattinam on a water body, the Madras High Court observed, "Even if you build a Taj Mahal on a waterbody we will tear it down."
The first bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy observed, “In several matters, the allegations levelled are that railway authorities and National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), in particular, tend to show little respect to water bodies standing in the way of their putting up new constructions to facilitate highways and railway operations."
The bench made the observations on a plea moved by S T Arumugam against the construction of the subway.
During the hearing on Wednesday, the counsel for the petitioner V Karthikeyan alleged that one or more waterbodies have been completely destroyed in undertaking the construction.
However, the counsel representing the railways submitted that the construction of the subway is over.
Refusing to concur with the submission, the bench observed, “The state will indicate the nature of the land which has been constructed upon and also the feasibility of the construction being taken down, if necessary, to resurrect the waterbody, if there was one." The bench directed the authorities to file a report by July 28.
"While it is important that highways must be built and deeper access by using the railways is also welcome, the authorities ought to avoid making any construction on any waterbody and if it is completely unavoidable, pillars or the like may be constructed so that the larger part of the waterbody is left undisturbed and the nature thereof not irreversibly altered," the court emphasised.
There have been other reports of police stations in some places being constructed on what used to be water bodies. The consistent refrain of the court has been that waterbodies ought to be preserved to allow humans and other life forms to survive and a zero-tolerance policy has to be adopted when it comes to disturbing or desecrating any waterbody any further, it said in its interim orders
Many major water bodies all over the state and particularly in urban areas have altogether disappeared. Even the reason for the devastating floods in 2015 was reported to be due to the flowing channels being impeded by arbitrary constructions in the city, it added.