PIL seeks action against officials for delayed announcement of

Charging Tamil Nadu government with being responsible for delayed announcement of excess water release from Chembarabakkam dam, allegedly the main cause of floods in Chennai and nearby districts, an industrialist today moved the Madras High Court, seeking action against officials concerned and also that they be tried for 'manslaughter.'
Rajiv Rai, an industrialist and an activist, also sought a direction to appoint a high-powered committee headed by a retired Supreme Court Judge or of Madras High Court, to study various events which led to the flooding.
The committee should also have in it government officials, technical persons, senior lawyers, scientists and environmentalists, het said.

The petitioner, while referring to the midnight water release, submitted that if one studied the levels of water in various catchment tanks on a daily basis, one could see that the reservoirs had much greater inflows than outflows right through in November 2015.
"Some Standard Operating Procedure ought to have been in place, whereby water was let off from Chembarambakkam and other reservoirs in stages and not held back till the fateful night of December 1, 2015."
Referring to government's statement that the outflow from Chembarabakkam was 39,000 cusecs, the highest in the history of Tamil Nadu, he alleged that the announcement of release of excess water was made at midnight and residents or the nearby people were unaware of it as they were asleep.

Citing media reports that the PWD department had alerted the Chief Secretary three days before its release, Rai alleged that the CS had 'slept over it' for three days and gave his consent only on the midnight of December 1.

The Chief Secretary, though well aware of reports that there would be heavy rains for some more days, had 'ignored' performing his duty and directing release of water when the warning from PWD was received, he said.
The act of the CS and other officials was 'wilful' and had resulted in a loss of lives, colossal damage to property, possessions and livelihood of several hundreds of thousands of residents, most of them poor, he said.

"This court should form an independent committee to investigate this matter and punish the officials for failure to perform their duty, as it amounted to nothing short of manslaughter," the petitioner said.
The PIL is expected to come up for hearing tomorrow along with another petition filed by advocate A P Suryaprakasam, which was transferred by a single Judge who opined that the matter in the petition seems to be of public interest.