Water bodies sacred, they should not be encroached upon, says Madras HC

Sureshkumar | TNN | Jan 6, 2021, 06.43 AM IST

CHENNAI: Water bodies should be treated as sacred places and preserved as without them human beings cannot survive, the Madras high court said on Tuesday.

“Water bodies are lifeline for all animal species. There has to be zero tolerance on any kind of encroachment or endangerment of any water body,” said the first bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy.

Hearing a public interest writ petition to remove encroachments on a water body in the Nilgiris, the bench said the state must take serious steps to remove encroachments on both public land and water bodies.

The court then directed the Nilgiris collector to file a detailed action-taken report in four weeks and ensure that the “last inch of encroachment “on the water body in Ithalar Village is removed.

According to the petitioner K Ramesh Kumar, Ithalar is a tiny village in the hills of the Nilgiris with around 150 houses. The residents of the village are small tea growers.

In 1980, considering the water shortage in the village, then village panchayat with the approval of the district administration developed two acres of government land in Arehalla into a water body, the petitioner said.

While the water body remained the only source of water for the entire village for the past three decades, owners of the land adjacent to the water body encroached upon it, he said. Now, they have constructed walls protecting their encroachment and have started extracting huge quantities of water for their use leading to water shortage in the village, he said.

Pointing out that the issue was brought to the knowledge of the authorities in 2013, the petitioner said authorities failed to take any action.

 

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/water-bodies-sacred-they-should-not-be-encroached-upon-says-madras-hc/articleshow/80125538.cms