The Hindu 27.07.2010
Coimbatore Corporation demolishes wall encroaching upon reserved site
Special Correspondent
| People warned against use of public land |
The Coimbatore Corporation demolishing on Monday the compound wall of a house that was built on the civic body's reserved site.
COIMBATORE: The Coimbatore Corporation on Monday demolished the compound wall of a house for encroaching upon a reserved site in the city.
The civic body said that through this action it wanted to warn people against encroaching upon its lands that were meant to be used only for public purposes.
The special demolition squad of the Corporation brought down the wall at A.K.S. Nagar, off Thadagam Road. The owner of the house had encroached upon one-and-a-half cents of the reserved site on its south eastern corner.
Assistant Town Planning Officer S. Ravichandran, who oversaw the demolition, said this was the second instance of a reserved site being rid of encroachments. This colony had two reserved sites of 50 cents each. Six months ago, the squad removed workshops, toilets and other unauthorised structures from one of the sites.
The wall targeted on Monday was on a site on which the Corporation was creating a park. The official said that the resident had built the wall on the reserved site apparently to turn the oddly-shaped house site to a rectangle. In the process, the resident had encroached upon public space that was of high value in this area. “The cost of land in this area is Rs.10 lakh a cent,” Mr. Ravichandran said.
Unauthorised structures on a poramboke land nearby were also removed by the squad, the official said. Apart from restoring parking space in buildings, the squads also focussed on retrieving reserved sites that were turned into sites for residential or commercial buildings.
“Every day, we are looking out for such violations across the city in order to retrieve such sites and use these only for the purposes for which they have been set aside,” Mr. Ravichandran said.
