HC dismisses plea seeking milling of roads in Pallavaram

The Madras High Court dismissed a plea seeking to scrape the existing layer before relaying of roads in Pallavaram Municipality and not to increase the height of the roads.

A division bench comprising Justice S Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad refused to grant the prayer after recording the submission by the Pallavaram Municipal Commissioner that the petitioner could not blindly insist that the entire roads and streets should not be varied from their original levels and there was no bona fide in the claims.

The bench also recorded the submission by the Commissioner that the practice of scraping the road was followed in areas where possible to take the milling machinery to remove the top layer and mill the same for recycling the materials recovered with the fresh road laying materials.

In some narrow streets, it was not possible as the milling machinery could not be taken inside. But in such narrow streets, the traffic was lesser and consequently the frequency of relaying works was very few and far between.

Further, maintaining that there was no arbitrary action on the part of Pallavaram Municipality in laying the roads, the Commissioner said the entire projects of storm water drains and underground drainage system were being implemented on a scientific basis and as per the requirements of the topography of the area. Wherever possible, the original levels of the streets were maintained and only in unavoidable places, due to the technical requirements, the level of the street would vary, the official added.

In fact, almost in entirety, the streets in Pallavaram were being re-laid over the dug up portions of the streets. In most areas, the levels were being fixed at the exact levels as they were before the start of the work, except a few locations where the streets had to be raised due to technical requirements. In all other places, the roads and streets were being re-laid after removing the debris and levelling the sub surface and brought to match the level of the earlier street surface, the Commissioner said.

The petitioner, D Sridharan, had submitted that the heights of such re-laid roads increased by almost 5 to 10 inches above the original height, thereby causing the roads to be higher than the houses which were constructed as per the originally existed road several years ago.

He had further submitted that if the roads were again re-laid without proper scrapping or milling or excavation, it might be difficult even to open the gate of the residences and other buildings as the road would obstruct the opening of the gates and pose difficulty in bringing the vehicles in and out of the buildings.