Chennai: A petition has been filed in the Madras high court to direct the authorities to remove the encroachments made on the Cauvery river bed area to an extent of more than 50 acres at Kothamangalam in Namakkal.
The First Bench comprising Chief Justice V.K. Tahilramani and Justice M.Duraiswamy before whom the petition filed by DMK MLA K.S. Moorthy came up for hearing, ordered notice, returnable by February 28 to the PWD and others and directed them to file a status report on the action taken.
When the petition came up for hearing on Wednesday, advocate Richardson Wilson, appearing for the petitioner submitted that the common people of the area, particularly the farmers were affected by the encroachments since it prevented the free flow of water to the agricultural lands. Government was maintaining stoic silence in the matter for the reasons best known them even though the tahsildar has found that there were encroachments, he added.
In his petition, Moorthy submitted that he was the present MLA of Paramathi Vellore Constituency, Namakkal. Many people in the constituency complained to him that in the Cauvery river bed an extent of more than 50 acres of land at Kothamangalam has been encroached by K. Kumarasamy and he has been enjoying the said encroached land by cultivating sugarcane and turmeric. Therefore, he wrote letters to various authorities including PWD.
However, except several communication between the authorities themselves relating to surveying the land, no action has been taken by them. Therefore, he filed the present petition, he added.
