The Chennai Corporation took a ‘U’ turn on Wednesday and requested
the Madras High Court to suspend its order passed on Tuesday, which
granted permission to it to demolish the ‘Needhi Karumari Amman temple’
constructed unauthorisedly on NSC Bose Road abutting the High Court’s
compound wall.

The second bench of Justices SK Agnihotri and KK
Sasidharan was told on Wednesday that the government’s policy decision
with regard to removal of construction of unauthorised temples at public
places had not been made known to the bench inadvertently.

The
bench was told that it would first attempt to persuade the encroachers
to remove the unauthorised construction on their own. Only if the
persuasion failed, it would resort to other statutory means to evict
them.

The matter relates to a ‘temple’ built in memory of former
chief minister late MG Ramachandran in 1985-86, right next to the main
entrance of the High Court. On Tuesday, responding to a contempt plea of
social activist KR Ramaswamy, and the demolition order passed by the
bench, the Corporation counsel gave an undertaking that the ‘temple’
would be removed and a compliance report would be filed by 2.25 pm on
Wednesday.

However, Advocate-General AL Somayaji told the bench
that the Corporation counsel had given the undertaking without proper
instructions and that the government’s policy on such religious
structures too had not been brought to the notice of the court.

Corporation
commissioner Vikram Kapoor filed an affidavit saying the government had
evolved a policy with respect to removal, regularisation and relocation
of temples, mosques, churches and gurudwaras in public places. “The
policy envisages the constitution of state-level and district level
committees to evict encroachments in relating to religious
constructions. The policy provides for persuasion/motivation and the
involvement of public at two stages, and where the first stage failed to
yield results, eviction can be resorted to by invoking statutory
provisions.” The failure to tell the court about the policy was a
bonafide mistake, Kapoor said, and tendered his unconditional apology
for the same.

The bench gave the corporation two weeks time to
comply with the demolition order and meanwhile Ramaswamy could file his
objections, if any.