CHENNAI: Barely a month after the State government introduced a new standard operating procedure (SOP) to handle evictions in a humane and dignified manner, houses in Govindasamy Nagar near the Buckingham Canal in RA Puram were razed on Saturday, in blatant violation of the code.
According to the new SOP, introduced by the government and implemented in April, while evicting residents from RK Nagar in Arumbakkam, houses would only be razed after all the residents were relocated and helped to shift their belongings by engaging private packers and movers. However, the Water Resources Department (WRD) and Tamil Nadu Urban Habitat Development Board (TNUHDB) on Saturday started the eviction of more than 259 houses in Govindasamy Nagar on the eastern side of the Buckingham canal and razed 15 houses, without giving the residents time to move their belongings.
J Sampath Kumar (42) on Saturday, who was trying to sell the remains of steel, doors, and other materials for scrap after his house was razed, said, “I spent several lakhs of rupees building the house. The government notified this as a slum in the 1970s. We have been living here for more than 60 years. Now, we’ve been thrown out of the city to Perumbakkam.”
Activists slammed the government for violating its own SOP less than a month after introduction. “The SOP has not been shared in the public domain and there has been a delay in finalising the Resettlement and Rehabilitation Policy. Evictions during the academic year have an adverse effect on children and this has not been taken into consideration,” said Vanessa Peter of Information and Resource Centre for the Deprived Urban Communities (IRCDUC).
Meanwhile, WRD and TNUHDB officials said they were acting on the order of the Supreme Court in a case filed by a businessman, who allegedly owns a huge piece of land adjacent to Govindasamy Nagar. In 2015, 366 hutments, on the southern side of the canal, were demolished based on the same SC order and residents were allotted houses at Okkiyam Thoraipakkam.
“We had decided to fight the order at the time as the land we are on was notified as a slum and it was more than 40 feet from the canal,” said S Velu, a resident of Govindasamy Nagar. However, the residents did not get a favourable order from the SC or the High Court. On October 25, 2021, the SC ordered the eviction of the residents within six months in a contempt petition moved by the businessman in 2015.
In the response to the contempt petition, the then State housing secretary submitted to the SC that the petition had been filed with the sole motive of personal gain. “The petitioner’s only interest is to gain additional wider access to his properties from the canal bank side to increase the real estate value of his property, which is located adjacent to the encroached area,” the submission said. It added the petitioner was planning to raise an apartment complex on the remaining land and sell flats at a premium by marketing them as ‘canal view apartments’.
“We voiced our objection to the eviction in the peace committee meeting held in November. Why would the government encourage us to build pucca houses on the land, which is going to be taken away? We are now forced to move to houses in Perumbakkam which don’t even have basic facilities like electricity connections,” said Sampath.
Asked why the department had violated the SOP in evicting residents, TNUHDB officials claimed the SoP couldn’t be followed as residents were not cooperating. “As far as the complaints regarding the facilities in Perumbakkam is concerned, they would be solved in the next two days,” said a TNUHDB official.