Interim stay against order to evict residents from Udhagai quarters

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court on Wednesday passed an interim injunction against the order of a single judge directing the Udhagamandalam Municipality to evict 200 families from a municipality-owned residential facility without having any documents.

The first division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice T Raja and D Bharatha Chakravarthy passed the direction on hearing a writ appeal preferred by Bernath Marry and 65 others who are the residents of the Municipality housing unit.

The petitioner's prayed for a direction to set aside the order of the single judge. According to the petitioners' counsel Thanga Vadhana Balakrishnan, though the municipality quarters were allotted for the municipality employees, actually such constructions were made as model houses for low-income groups (LIG) right from 1866 by the British. She further pointed out that therefore, her clients could not be termed as encroachers.

Recording the submissions, the bench passed an interim stay order passed to evict around 200 families and to take possession of the disputed housing quarters.

In his order, the single judge observed that though the complaints have been made by several people saying that municipality employees and their heirs sublet the premises allotted to them, no action was taken by the commissioner of Udhagamandalam municipality.

Therefore, the single judge directed the Nilgiris collector to conduct an inspection and submit a report after evicting the illegal occupants in the premises of the Municipality.