The
Madras High Court had on January 19 this year asked the Coimbatore
district administration, Coimbatore Corporation and the Tamil Nadu Slum
Clearance Board to remove within six months the encroachments in Jeeva
Nagar, Kavundampalayam.

The deadline given by the then Chief
Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M. Sundar would expire by July
19, three days away. But the officials seemed to have done very little
in this regard.

The court had delivered its judgement in writ
petitions filed by the K.K. Pudur Residents Welfare Association and the
Nagammal Street Residents Welfare Association that had sought a
direction to the authorities to evict the occupants of the 121 houses in
Jeeva Nagar, who by building houses had reduced from 70 feet to 15 feet
the width of the one-km-long road that connects Mettupalayam Road with
Thadagam Road.

It said that though there was no dispute among the
parties to the case that the residents had indeed encroached upon the
road space, it would not accept the arguments of the district
administration, Coimbatore Corporation and the Board that the people had
moved into the area a few years before the petitioner-association
members had built houses.

The court also found fault with the
district administration’s approach to the issue and dismissed the
argument that the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board had notified the area
for slum development and had spent a few lakh rupees.

But now with
the deadline a few days away, the petitioner associations complained
that none of the authorities, cited as respondents, had complied with
the order.

They would move the court for contempt, said K.K.M. Shelvaraju, president of the K.K. Pudur association.

List sent for approval

Sources
said that the Coimbatore Corporation had completed capturing the
biometric details of the occupants to be evicted and shared the details
with the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board for action.

The Board
officials confirmed the receipt of the Corporation’s list and said that
they had sent it to their head office for approval.

Once the head
office granted the approval, the Board along with the civic body and
district administration would relocate the people to its tenements in
Keeranatham and thereafter demolish their houses in Jeeva Nagar.