Aastha Thakur
Published on: 05 September 2022 at 22:06 IST
The Madras High Court recently issued a warning against Tamil Nadu’s frequent cases of encroaching on waterbodies, claiming that these encroachments were to blame for the State’s floods and drought.
In a ruling issued on August 30, a bench of Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice N Mala stated that this was because, whenever it rained, encroachments prevented water from accumulating in the tanks.
The Court emphasized the need of protecting nature and ruled that, “It would not be out of place to mention that on account of rampant encroachment on waterbodies and tanks, the State of Tamil Nadu suffered drought and in contrast floods.”
“This happened for the reason that whenever there was rain, water could not accumulate in the tanks on account of encroachments and in contrast, the condition of the flood was seen at times due to non-availability of area where water can store on account of the encroachments on the waterbodies or tanks. The need of the hour is to protect/safeguard waterbodies/tanks,”
The Court further reiterated that, “If we take care of nature, nature will take care of us. The problem of global warming is prevalent only because of the failure of the human beings to take care of the nature.”
“If we keep on affecting the nature, it would affect the human beings and it is happening day-in and day-out in the form of natural disasters like tsunami, earthquake, etc.,”
The Tamil Nadu Protection of Tanks and Eviction of Encroachment Rules, 2007, were being used to consider a number of petitions submitted by seven petitioners who had been issued eviction notices by neighbourhood and district level authorities.
The State authorities charged the petitioners with trespassing on property set aside for waterbodies.
The state government represented by special government pleader A Selvendran, contended that the eviction notice can’t be served before the hearing in the 2007 Rules. As per the Rules, an encroacher has to be served with an eviction notice, which the State did, Selvendran argued. Therefore, the present writ petitions must be dismissed, it was contended.
The Court took note of the submissions and said that it could not condone any instance of encroachment of public grounds, water bodies etc.
“It is the duty of every citizen to maintain water-bodies, tanks,grazing land, and even forests. Time and again, this court has held that unchecked encroachment of waterbodies has vastly reduced the areas reserved in the interest of public and ecological balance,”
On this basis the pleas were dismissed.