[Glamyclitlemi]

About 25 of the 37,000 buildings in the city, identified as illegal structures, were sealed by officials of the city corporation and Chennai metropolitan development authority (CMDA) on Monday. The action came just a day before the deadline set by the Madras high court to crack the whip on such illegal constructions expires.

After the October 12 HC direction, officials of the CMDA and corporation who had been lax over the issue of illegal buildings, swung into action in Ranganathan street and North Usman road in the commercial hub of T. Nagar Monday morning. However, they locked and sealed only 25 buildings, while the court had pointed out that the T. Nagar area alone had more than 100 unauthorised buildings, besides more than 1,000 unauthorised constructions.

While the corporation authorities sealed 19 buildings, CMDA took action against six buildings, including Ratna Stores, Sri Kumaran Gold House, The Chennai Silks and Jayachandran Textiles (Ranganathan street).

In the past three months, more than 200 buildings, including commercial and residential buildings, were sealed by the corporation, while CMDA acted against only 48 buildings in the last four years.

“Thanks to the high court intervention, a few buildings in Choolai were sealed, but illegal buildings are constructed by realtors in several parts of central Chennai,“ said civic activist P. Solomon, whose petition seeking action against illegal buildings is pending in court. Though the Madras high court-appointed monitoring committee had identified thousands of buildings as illegal structures for violating the development control rules, the decision to seal only 25 buildings in the city on Monday has raised the eyebrows of the general public.

It also appears that the unauthorised buildings might not face the bulldozer as they have been served only with ‘lockand-seal’ notices.

Sources in the CMDA said a few buildings were spared, temporarily, after they showed stay orders obtained several years ago from a civil court. But once the hearing comes up before the HC on Tuesday, they will also face the music, they said.

While the high court had observed the officials’ lock-and-seal activities as an ‘eye wash’, and criticised them for not demolishing any structures, the officials again preferred to only seal the buildings.

Earlier, the monitoring committee had identified over 6,000 buildings as unauthorised; action has been initiated only against less than 50 buildings. However, officials cite the previous government’s ordinance for not demolishing the illegal structures.

“We stopped the demolition after the government issued an ordinance in 2007 which had been renewed till 2010.

Sixty-four illegal structures in the T. Nagar area have been identified by a special survey and notices have been issued to 32 in the initial phase, while 32 other cases are under assessment,” sources in the monitoring committee said, and added that the step (lockand-seal) should be seen as a progressive one as they cannot run their business till they correct the deviations.

Around 37,000 buildings in the city were identified as unauthorised when the government, in 1999, sought to regularise illegal constructions.

However, the figure was brought down to a few thousands when the corporation authorities decided to let off residential buildings which constituted a major chunk of such constructions.

- dc chn