MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court on Friday summoned the Madurai collector and corporation commissioner on a petition seeking directions to remove an unauthorised construction raised by the panchayat and corporation officials on a parcel of temple land at Chinna Anuppanadi in Madurai.
The litigants C Madhavan, S Sonaimuthu and R Dhakshinamurthy of Madurai, in their joint petition, submitted that the Gurunathaswamy temple in Chinna Anuppanadi was built by their forefathers 400 years ago. In 1997, the village panchayat and other government departments encroached on a portion of the temple's land. A civil suit was filed and following an order passed by the civil court, the same was stopped, they added.
But after the Chinna Anuppanadi area came under the corporation's administration, the latter began constructing an extension of a government hospital building on the temple's land without obtaining any permission from the HR and CE department, the litigants alleged and sought the above direction.
When the case came for hearing before a bench of Justices R Subramanian and L Victoria Gowri, the judges asked as to when the encroachment would be removed. While the counsel for Madurai Corporation replied that the collector is the competent authority to answer the question, the counsel for the district collector claimed only the corporation commissioner could answer it. Hearing this, the judges directed both officers to be present at the court at 10.30 am on March 21 to report as to when the encroachment would be removed.