Chennai has become unliveable: SC

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Chennai: "Where am I supposed to go? I had built a house, not a hut in a slum. I had put all mu life's earnings into this house and now all is lost."

The lament comes from Velli, whose house in Porur has been razed down by Corporation officials in their fresh drive to remove encroachments.

The bulldozing began after the Supreme Court upheld the Madras High Court's order to remove 32,000 illegal and unauthorised constructions in the city. The Supreme Court had said:

"The whole city of Chennai is now unlivable because you allowed unauthorised constructions to flourish in violation of all building Laws. Let the people live in peace. Let there be some discipline."

Unauthorised buildings started springing up everywhere in Chennai as they were routinely regularised by the local administration.

With the regularisation law declared unconstitutional by the court, an estimated Rs 800 crore of regularisation fee collected till now is to be refunded.

The Supreme Court order focuses more on the large-scale violators - the commercial establishments, and multi-storeyed apartments that have enjoyed a free rein till now.

But experts worry that the Chennai Metro Development Authority might bulldoze petty shops and helpless residents in a show of obeying court orders and let the big fish slip away.

And as predicted, the first casualty is this lower middle class locality. Hopefully, the local administration will be as law-abiding in the case of the big violators too.

(With inputs from Veeraraghav)