CHENNAI: The First Bench of the Madras High Court on Friday dismissed a PIL praying for a direction to the State Chief Secretary to consider a representation dated February 19 relating to large-scale mining of ‘savudu’ in a tank at Nemam in Tiruvallur district, which allegedly resulted in the breaching of the Chembarambakkam lake causing loss of human lives and properties running to several crores.
On a perusal of the materials on record and the affidavit, the Bench of Chief Justice SK Kaul and Justice MM Sundresh said on Friday that they were not satisfied with the bona-fide of CM Durai Aananth of Egmore, the petitioner, in this case. The petitioner appears to be only a name lender for the PIL. He has collected the representation of third parties and their responses and then made a representation to create the grounds to file the PIL. He, by profession, is a transporter, having no previous experience of PIL nor has he done any social work or has any special knowledge of the subject matter in question that is, flooding. “We thus reject the writ petition made on behalf of the petitioner and close the same,’’ the Bench said and accordingly closed it.
The Bench said that it would like to look into the issue raised and in fact, there are certain other petitions pending before the court on the same subject matter that involved questions such as how necessary actions were taken or not taken by the disaster management authority and others.