Highways dept fails to clear all encroachments

The Trichy district administration helped the then Burmese repatriates to make a living by allotting them 32 shop lots ranging from 36 sq ft to 108 sq ft on the western boundary wall of the Southern Railway divisional office. Today, the Burmese people of Indian-origin have all left, except for a few, while the shop lots were sub-let to others who made a windfall over a period of more than two decades. Some of them have become proud owners of several others shops in the vicinity.

Meanwhile, the number of shop lots increased to more than 60 on the prime stretch of land with the help of conniving district administration officials as well as state highways department, who then helped to secure the very same shop lots in the name of physically challenged persons who needed to be rehabilitated. Now, the state highways department, which wants to widen the roads has been handicapped as it tried in vain to demolish the unauthorised shop lots on Friday but succeeded in razing only six of them. Unless all the shop lots are removed simultaneously, the road-widening could not be effected as desired by the highways.

As many as 32 physically-challenged persons had moved the munsif court and got orders against the eviction. Five cases were still pending in the civil court and 12 cases are being appealed in the higher courts.

The highways department threatened action against the encroachers and even demolished a few shops every two years, but once the palms are greased, the shop lots are back in its place in the name of a different person, said a shop-keeper across the road.

It all started recently with Trichy divisional railway manager A V Vaidiyalingam requesting the district collector Jayashree Muralidharan to remove the encroachments along the western wall of the DRM's office on the Trichy-Dindigul Road.

Earlier, the highways department had, in the first of week of August this year, demolished a ramp at the end 250-metre long road, a second passage way to the Junction Railway Station, from Bharathiyar Salai for violating norms.

The highway officials then said that the road had been bridged with the Bharathiyar Salai (leading to Dindigul highway) overnight by the railway engineers in a high-handed manner without proper planning. Though the Rs 1 crore road that runs parallel to the existing and the only approach road to the railway station from the highway was completed in July itself, it could not be opened to the public as it stands at a height of two feet from the surface of Bharathiyar Salai. Moreover, an additional engineer (highways) told TOI that even the so-called ramp was occupying about 16 feet of the highway road, triggering a number of minor accidents.