Latest News | HC Imposes Rs 50,000 Fine on Litigant

Chennai, Dec 1 (PTI) The Madras High Court has imposed a cost of Rs 50,000 on a public interest litigant for abusing the 'legal process' by filing a PIL challenging the construction of a rail under bridge in Nagapattinam district, which had already been rejected by the court and the railway authority concerned.

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The first bench of Acting Chief Justice M N Bhandari and Justice P D Audikesavalu imposed the cost on S T Arumugam, who questioned the construction of a Limited Use Subway (LUS) at the unmanned Level Crossing (LC) at Gate No.19 of the railway track between Vedaranyam and Thiruthuraipoondi.

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His main plank of the grouse was that the subway was being constructed on a waterbody.

The Nagapattinam district Collector submitted that the land on both sides of the railway track, where the subway was being constructed, had been classified as government poramboke-railway land. There was no classified waterbody, tank, river, channel or water course either in the subway constructed or in the surrounding lands, he asserted.

The bench observed it is clearly borne out from the materials placed on record that the gate is certainly for public safety and better convenience and there is no element of public interest involved in the claim made to the contrary by the petitioner. Moreover, a division bench of this High Court had in 2019 dismissed a PIL on the same issue. Yet there was one more PIL on the same subject, which was disposed of by another bench with a direction to the petitioner to approach the authority concerned.

Accordingly, he had moved the authority in Tiruchirappalli, who had also rejected the plea in February this year, by which time 95 per cent of the construction work was over, the bench pointed out.

In the absence of any independent reason justifying the location of the subway, it is not possible to entertain the challenge made by the petitioner, the bench said and dismissed the petition with cost. The amount must be paid through Demand Draft by December 15 to the Tamil Nadu State Legal Service Authority under written acknowledgment, the bench added.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)