Roads are all over, should people eat stones, asks HC
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Chennai:25.10.2018
If roads are laid everywhere, soon there would be no land left to cultivate food. So saying, the Madras high court has expressed dismay over the increasing number of road projects coming up at the cost of environment and ecology.
“People most probably have to feed on mud and stone,” observed a division bench of Justice T S Sivagnanam and Justice Bhavani Subbaroyan.
The comments came during a hearing on batch of pleas challenging acquisition of land under NHAI Act for the Chennai-Salem Greenfield Corridor on Wednesday. In the course of arguments, one among the counsel for the petitioners informed the court about another such road project connecting Chennai and Bangalore.
Wondering what was the need for another such a highway connecting Chennai and Bangalore, the bench said, “Going by the trend it seems Tamil Nadu will have only roads and people probably have to feed on mud and stone.”
The bench added that due to such infrastructure projects agricultural lands were being pushed to the brink. With no water source left, farmers are forced to sell or convert farm lands into housing plots. The aspect of dams displacing numerous people also surfaced during arguments, and it was stated that people already marginalised were the worst-affected. “The Sardar Sarovar Dam across Naramada river is an example where people have been fighting for the past three decades,” the court remarked.
Responding to the observation, assistant solicitor-general G Karthikeyan claimed that Sardar Sarovar project had enabled agriculture in over 1 lakh hectares and has ushered in development. To this, the court said: “Development at what cost? What about the people who lost their precious land and livelihood for the project? Karthikeyan replied that without pain there could not be gain.
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Chennai:25.10.2018
If roads are laid everywhere, soon there would be no land left to cultivate food. So saying, the Madras high court has expressed dismay over the increasing number of road projects coming up at the cost of environment and ecology.
“People most probably have to feed on mud and stone,” observed a division bench of Justice T S Sivagnanam and Justice Bhavani Subbaroyan.
The comments came during a hearing on batch of pleas challenging acquisition of land under NHAI Act for the Chennai-Salem Greenfield Corridor on Wednesday. In the course of arguments, one among the counsel for the petitioners informed the court about another such road project connecting Chennai and Bangalore.
Wondering what was the need for another such a highway connecting Chennai and Bangalore, the bench said, “Going by the trend it seems Tamil Nadu will have only roads and people probably have to feed on mud and stone.”
The bench added that due to such infrastructure projects agricultural lands were being pushed to the brink. With no water source left, farmers are forced to sell or convert farm lands into housing plots. The aspect of dams displacing numerous people also surfaced during arguments, and it was stated that people already marginalised were the worst-affected. “The Sardar Sarovar Dam across Naramada river is an example where people have been fighting for the past three decades,” the court remarked.
Responding to the observation, assistant solicitor-general G Karthikeyan claimed that Sardar Sarovar project had enabled agriculture in over 1 lakh hectares and has ushered in development. To this, the court said: “Development at what cost? What about the people who lost their precious land and livelihood for the project? Karthikeyan replied that without pain there could not be gain.
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