HC flays corporation for filing review plea

The Madras High Court today rejected the Chennai Corporation's petition seeking a review of its order on removal of a temple near the Court.
"This is a strange, rather a unique, review petition filed by Chennai City Municipal Corporation after succeeding in the writ petition filed by an encroacher on removing a platform temple near high court campus, instead of complying with the order," a division bench, comprising Justice Satish K. Agnihotri and Justice K.K. Sasidharan, said in its order.
The court had on December 16 last year ordered the removal of the temple, built for the well-being of former chief minister M G Ramachandran in late 1980s, holding that it was an encroachment and that it did cause hindrance to pedestrians.

Rejecting the civic body's plea, the bench said "we strongly deprecate the conduct of the city municipal corporation in coming with this review petition to delay the demolition of the illegal structure in spite of orders by this court as early as on December 16, 2013."
"The Chennai Corporation appears to have taken up the responsibility of filing the review petition so as to enable Kantha Srinivasan, trustee of Sri Needhi Karumariamman Temple, to retain the private temple constructed in public property," the bench said.
The judges said the Corporation was expected to protect public property.

".. Roads are not meant for construction of temple, mosque or church. The Corporation was fully correct in directing removal of the temple building as it would deny the public usage of the road. Authorities, instead of protecting the interests of the Corporation, are now indulging in acts like filing a review petition without there being any adverse order against them," the court said.

Kantha's plea challenging the Corporation's notice directing removal of the temple was dismissed by the court on December 16.
"Unfortunately, the Chennai Corporation, who is the authority to enforce its own earlier order of demolition, has come up with this review petition for reasons best known to them only," the judges said and dismissed the review petition.