Encroachment: Report on squatter removal sought by Madras HC
CHENNAI: The Madras High Court directed the State government to submit within six weeks an action-taken-report on encroachments of land belonging to Trisoolanathar temple in Chennai. The court noted that, according to submissions made by government pleader P Muthukumar, the temple owned 83.26 acre, of which 21 acre was let out, while the balance 62 acre was encroachment upon.
“As to the balance, it is submitted that there is encroachment and action was initiated against the encroachers since they had purported to rely on forged documents. However, it does not appear that the encroachers have been removed,” the court stated. The matter was posted for 29 November.
The petition to retrieve the land belonging to the temple was filed by an advocate, S Xavier Felix. He said encroachment of the temple land – construction of houses without basic amenities – came to his notice when he went to attend a function in the locality.
He said the Trisoolanathar temple owned 87 acre, worth Rs 200 crore, in Pallavaram Municipality, but most parts of it was encroached upon and sold at throwaway prices. Buildings were raised but without sewerage and power supply. The petitioner prayed for orders to take action for disconnecting power supply provided to the illegal and unauthorised constructions.
‘Clear backlog on lawyer enrolment’
Chennai: The Madras High Court said the Bar Council would do well to speed up enrolment of lawyers to clear pending applications. The First Bench, however, made the observation while rejecting for lack of merit a petition seeking orders to speed up the process. The petition was filed by KB Vijayakumar, a lawyer. He prayed for orders to the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry and the Bar Council of India to enrol the applicants whose applications have been pending from 2016 for the reason of producing documents. He also prayed for orders to the Bar Council of India to issue fresh or reissue circulars/notifications to all the State Bar Councils to specify the documents that must be taken for enrolment of law graduates as advocates.