CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has ordered notice on a contempt application seeking to punish the chairman of the Tamil Nadu Housing Board for an offence under the provisions of the Contempt of Court Act for disobeying its earlier orders.
When the application from D Sampath Kumar and others came up before Justice MM Sundresh on Monday, the Housing Board’s advocate took notice and the judge adjourned the matter by two weeks.
According to petitioner’s counsel K Parameswari, her client and 106 others had purchased housing plots in Vinayakapuram, coming under the Ganapathy neighbourhood scheme in Coimbatore. Most of them had already constructed houses after obtaining planning approval. However, the acquisition proceedings, initiated by the government in 1992, were quashed by the High Court on November 10, 2000, Parameswari argued.
Thereafter, when the petitioners approached the Special Tahsildar to issue NOCs to show that their lands were released from acquisition, there was no response from him. However, subsequently they came to know that they were refused NOCs on the ground that the Housing Board headquarters alone could issue them.
After sending several representations to the headquarters, the petitioners had approached the High Court, which on March 28 last directed the Board to issue the NOCs to the petitioners within eight weeks.
However, the Board had failed to comply with this order. Hence, the present petition to punish the Board chairman for his alleged willful disobedience of the court’s earlier order, Parameshwari added.