8-lane project: HC verdict on Monday

Even as the multi-crore eight-lane Salem-Chennai green corridor project, which created a lot of furore among farmers’ has turned out to be a major campaign point in the ensuing Lok Sabha elections, the Madras High Court is set to pronounce its verdict on Monday on a batch of writ petitions seeking to stall its implementation.

The division bench comprising Justice TS Sivagnanam and Justice Bhavani Subbaroyan, which passed an interim order directing the Government to abstain from dispossessing the farmers of their lands following a string of complaints regarding harassment from police and revenue officials, had reserved its orders on December 14, 2018.

The bench in its interim order had held, “The respondents are directed not to dispossess the respective landowners from the land in question, which they propose to acquire until further orders in these writ petitions.”

The ambitious 277.3 km long eight-lane greenfield project connecting Salem and Chennai under the Centre’s ‘Bharatmala Pariyojana’ scheme aims to cut travel time between the two cities by half to about two hours and 15 minutes. But the hurried manner in which the alignment was worked out requiring vast tracts of farm lands and forest lands had created a lot of protests and stiff opposition from locals, including farmers over fears of losing their land, besides environmentalists who opposed felling of trees for the project.

However, even as the hearing in the case was in progress, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways had issued a fresh set of notifications to initiate land acquisition of 1,125 acres of land spread out in Salem, Dharmapuri, Tiruvannamalai and Kancheepuram districts for the project. It was contended that the alignment was changed to avoid it passing through the Theethamalai Reserve Forest and instead go through the outskirts of the forest.

The counter filed by the project implementation unit of the National Highways Authority Government had stated that owing to the realignment the required area of the lands had come down and had averted demolition of several houses in various villages.

However, during poll campaign, while DMK President MK Stalin has assured that the expressway project would be scrapped and the existing highway developed, Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami who initially claimed that the land acquisition proceedings was not opposed by 89 per cent of the people, made it known during the campaign that any project affecting the farmers would not be implemented.