Title - PIL filed against southern railway

A public interest writ petition has been filed in the Madras High Court to restrain the authorities concerned from deleting Royapuram railway station from the list of heritage buildings in phase-I, prepared by the CMDA and the Heritage Conservation panel.

The second bench comprising Justices R Banumathi and T S Sivagnanam before which the PIL from advocate S Sathia Chandran came up for hearing on Wednesday, ordered notice returnable in two weeks.

The PIL’s interim prayer was to restrain the Southern Railway GM from carrying out any repair or renovation work, including painting of the building.

According to the petitioner, he came to know through a newspaper that the Southern Railway officials had approached the Heritage Conservation Committee for removal of the Royapuram railway station building from the list of the heritage buildings so as to enable them to demolish it and undertake some other projects.

It was most unfortunate that the Railways had mooted this extreme, destructive and disastrous step of wiping out the history from its precincts and at the same time, claiming heritage of various kinds.

The building is of historic importance, remaining the oldest station in the entire sub-continent from 1856. On the 72-acre station premises, the heritage building did not even occupy a quarter ground of 2,400 sq.ft.

Hence the insensitivity of the railways to the history and heritage of the station building was highly condemnable, the petitioner contended.